Rwanda will stage its first executions tomorrow for crimes of genocide, publicly putting to death 33 prisoners convicted after the slaughter of an estimated 800,000 people in 1994, state radio said yesterday.
It said the executions, which diplomats expect to be carried out by firing squad, were ordered at a special cabinet meeting on Monday when the President, Mr Pasteur Bizimungu, turned down pleas for amnesty.
The executions will be held less than a fortnight before the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, is due to visit Rwanda during an African tour.
The general public has been invited to watch the executions in a soccer stadium in the capital, Kigali, and at four provincial towns in the tiny central African country.
"It has been decided that the first 33 genocide convicts will be executed in public this Friday at 10 a.m. [9 a.m. Irish time]," Radio Rwanda said, quoting a cabinet communique.
"This will act as a lesson to people who do not respect the life of others," it said.
Rwanda began its genocide trials in December 1996 and has condemned scores of people to death for playing active parts in the three-month orgy of killings by Hutu extremists. An estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in the genocide, which ended when the former Hutu government was driven from power by rebel forces.
Rwanda's prisons are packed with about 130,000 prisoners, overwhelmingly Hutus, awaiting trial for the genocide.
Survivors have complained about the slow pace of trials and will be mollified by the first executions.
"We welcome these punishments because they will definitely do away with the culture of impunity that has damaged our country," a group called the Association of Peace Volunteers said in a statement.
Four years after the genocide Rwanda's government says many of those responsible are at large and responsible for a bloody insurgency by Hutu rebels in parts of the country.