30 held for absconding T.I.G

NYAMASHEKE - About 30 former inmates who are said to have deliberately dodged T.I.G in Nyamasheke district have been arrested and detained at Ntendezi Police station, security sources confirmed yesterday. TIG, “Travail d’Intérêt Général,” is a French acronym that means works of general service. The sentence allows genocide convicts to serve all or part of their conviction through community service. Some of the T.I.G works include constructing roads as well as working on farms. According to Jean Paul Murenzi, the co-coordinator of T.I.G in Nyamasheke district, former genocide convicts in the area have been observed to be absconding T.I.G. Authorities have also observed that some of the TIG convicts are known to have fled to other districts or to the neighbouring country of the Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC). Murenzi added that such illegal acts by T.I.G convicts are known to brings more pain to the genocide survivors since they feel the perpetrators are not punished.Those arrested admitted not to have completed their T.I.G conviction claiming ignorance. “We highly appreciate the form of lighter sentence that our court system handed us but we never did T.I.G not because we despise the court decisions , but because we never knew the duration of the punishment”, said one of the suspects. A T.I.G report on Nyamasheke district shows that over 8,000 genocide convicts were supposed to carry out works of general service, but only 4,000 accomplished their tasks. Among the 4,000 who never accomplished their T.I.G sentences over 300 have gone missing. Ends