Ambassador Pierre-Richard Prosper was a young Los Angeles lawyer when he got the opportunity in 1995 to be the lead prosecutor in a war crimes trial after the Rwandan genocide.
The case was the first in which rape was prosecuted as a war crime. Prosper’s team was ultimately able to get Jean-Paul Akayesu, the then-mayor of a town called Taba, convicted, along with other charges, of the mass rape of local Tutsi women.
Prosper said that there could still be many more cases of rape from the conflict that have not come to light.
“There’s definitely many more that we don’t know about in Rwanda because you have to keep in mind particularly back then it was a taboo subject in Africa and, really, throughout the world,” Prosper said. “If you’re a rape victim/survivor, it’s tough to out yourself out there and have it be known and effectively put a letter on your back so everyone knows you were a victim of multiple acts of sexual violence.”
One million people were killed over 100 days in 1994 in the East African nation of Rwanda. In addition, it is estimated that tens of thousands of women were raped in the conflict.
The designation of rape as a war crime pre-dates the creation of the United Nations and yet it took decades for the crime to be prosecuted on an international level. Prosper, later appointed to oversee war crimes cases by Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, added that there is still plenty of work to do in bringing war criminals to justice.
“I think the dialogue is there. We’re seeing victims more willing to come forward and they’re recognizing that they are victims and not responsible. I think we still have a long way to go,” he said. “For some reason, people still believe that they can commit these acts, that they can devalue another person. Where I do believe there is some slippage and we’re not doing enough is on the international stage, particularly in conflicts.”
Prosper’s work in Rwanda is the subject of a documentary entitled “The Uncondemned.” It is being shown on Friday at the Broadway Theatre in Salt Lake City.
