Bazaramba’s road to judgement

Francois Bazaramba, 59, has been running away from something almost all of his life

Francois Bazaramba

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By Mikko Paakkanen
     
      Francois Bazaramba is likely to spend his 60th birthday in prison. Eastern Finland District Court sentenced him to life in prison on Friday for mass killing in the Rwanda genocide of 1994. Extremist Hutus massacred about 800,000 Rwandans over a period of thee months. Most of the victims were Tutsis.
      The sentence, handed down in Porvoo, was the first in Finnish history for participation in a genocide. Bazaramba denies his guilt.
     
The road to the sentencing was a long one. When Bazaramba applied for political asylum in Finland in 2003, it was not the first time that he changed countries, hoping for safety. He had been on the run for a large part of his life.
      Bazaramba is a Hutu from Burundi. He fled to Rwanda in 1972, at the age of 21, when the army in the Tutsi-led Burundi was systematically killing Hutus.
     
He settled in the municipality of Nyakizu. The newcomer was consdiered to be wise, polite, and of good manners. An elderly Tutsi man actually took Bazaramba as his adopted son, and finally named him the head of his family.
      Now the court saw that being part of a Tutsi family during the genocide, might have given Bazaramba, a Hutu, a reason to distance himself from the Tutsis by taking part in the oppression of the Tutsis.
      In the Finnish court, Bazaramba has appeared to be of stable and circumspect demeanour. He has responded to questions put to him by the prosecution in proper and precise manner, wearing a dapper dark suit. His calm was not shaken even when his own lawyer became angry.
     
Bazaramba’s home village Birambo is a remote corner of Africa on a bumpy unpaved road. It was only last year that moves were made to bring electricity there. The villagers are farmers.
      Bazaramba advanced to take his place among the better-off in the village. He was educated, and ended up being a rich man by the standards of the remote village: he owned houses, and a motorcycle.
      Bazaramba served as the headmaster of the village’s educational institution. His wife was the director of the health clinic. Bazaramba was in an important position in the Baptist Church, and in the refugee camp on the outskirts of the village, where Hutus who had fled Burundi had escaped.
     
Something happened in the early 1990s when Bazaramba had studied for two years in Cameroon, and returned to his village.
      “He became politically hot”, a villager from Birambo said to Helsingin Sanomat in Rwanda in 2007.
      The court found that the testimony given by people about Bazaramba’s political activities was so contradictory that it was impossible to say wither or not he was a member of the Hutu MDR party or not. In its decision, the court found that Bazaramba was a leading figure in the village during the genocide.
      He held a speech on the village square in 1994, where he urged people to kill Tutsis. At the nearby Cyahinda Church and on the slopes of a nearby mountain he took part in attacks where Hutus killed as many as 30,000 Tutsis.
     
After the genocide, in the summer of 1994 Bazaramba and his family fled to Congo. It was there that he made contact with Finland. He had met a Finnish clergyman who worked at a refugee camp.
      From the camp, Bazaramba slipped into Kenya. From there he moved on to the Zambian capital Lusaka. He arrived in Finland in March 2003, and found himself at a refugee reception centre in Vaasa.
      At the local Baptist congregation he led international small groups, where people would sing hymns and read the Bible. Bazaramba’s wife and their 12-year-old adopted son followed him to Finland later.
      When the family moved to Porvoo in 2006, an international arrest warrant had already been issued for Bazaramba.
     
At the beginning of 2007 the Aliens’ Office, (currently the Finnish Immigration Service), asked the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to investigate Bazaramba’s background. In late 2007 the police made note of a criminal complaint for mass murder. A few days later Bazaramba was arrested at home in Porvoo. He has not had a day of freedom since them.
      The criminal complaint of 2007 led to an exceptionally difficult investigation. Of the 68 witnesses that were questioned, only one of them had lived in Finland.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 13.6.2010


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Rwandan man accused of genocide says he tried to save Tutsis (17.6.2009)
  Finland will not extradite suspected war criminal to Rwanda (20.2.2009)
  Finnish police investigators arrive in Rwanda to investigate genocide charges (10.5.2007)
  Bazaramba plans to appeal genocide conviction (14.6.2010)
  Life sentence handed down in Rwanda genocide case heard in Porvoo (11.6.2010)
  On the trail of a genocide (15.4.2007)
  COMMENTARY: Rwanda genocide case tests international reach of Finnish law (12.4.2007)

MIKKO PAAKKANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
mikko.paakkanen@hs.fi