Rwanda: The Execution Will Not Be Televised

The objective was for justice to be seen to be done -- but apparently not to be seen too widely or recorded: Rwanda staged public executions today of 22 Hutu militants convicted of taking part in the 1994 genocide of the country's Tutsi minority. But police enforced a strict ban on cameras and recording devices. In the capital, Kigali, 30,000 people flocked to the soccer stadium to see three men and one woman shot one by one as they were tied to stakes with black hoods over their heads. Some of the 18 other executions in provincial towns were attended by children -- high school students in some towns were even given the day off to attend. Perhaps the most macabre detail of the spectacle was the black target placed on the chest of each condemned person -- their executioners, after all, fired from less than a yard away.