ABSTRACT
Thirteen years after the Rwandan genocide of 1994, thousands of prisoners accused of genocidal crimes were transferred to ingando solidarity camps for re-education and rehabilitation before being released. The six-week stay in ingando followed a decade in prison. How can we understand ingando solidarity camps in post-genocide Rwanda, and what impact does ingando have on its participants? For eleven weeks, I followed nineteen men and two women during and after their transit from prison to home. They were charged with lower-category crimes, such as burglary, pillaging, causing bodily harm, and in some cases, complicity to murder. Before 1994, they were farmers, tailors, shopkeepers, teachers or chaufffeurs. In the absence of an operating judiciary, their cases had not been investigated. After having passed through ingando, they would come up before the gacaca village courts. The National Community and Reconciliation Commission (NURC) was in charge of organizing the ingando camps. My research shows that Rwandan society, including the ex-prisoners themselves, consider the ingando a transit space. Ingando presents the new order of wrong and right; the period of genocide is an evil episode in a bright past. Ex-prisoners appreciated the practical information about work, housing, and health, but they also felt humiliated, indoctrinated, and stigmatized. Based on the stories of ex-prisoners, this chapter interprets the ingando ‘passage’ using three diffferent levels: the political, social, and psychological.
