CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS OF THE RWANDAN CONTEXT AND WOMEN’S PLIGHT AND ROLE IN THEIR COMMUNITY
4.4 Rwandan women from independence to the time of the genocide
4.4.5 Sufferings of Rwandan women as consequences of the genocide
In addition to many socio-economic problems shared by all the survivors of the genocide, Rwandan women continue to suffer injuries peculiar to them. Those who were victims of sexual abuse continue to bear consequences of these abuses in their bodies and minds. An additional kind of trouble was experienced by women in mixed marriages.
4.4.5.1 Sexual related injuries
40 Information provided by the official gazette of the Republic in 2003.
41 The estimated number provided by AVEGA Agahozo, research on the violence perpetrated against Rwandan women.
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women after the RPF took control of the country. In the years following the genocide, cases of rapes with violence and even sadism were still reported. Some women were raped, decapitated, and thrown into latrines. Others, accused of being interahamwe, were savagely violated: stripped naked, they were kicked with boots, beaten with wooden sticks, and knives were used to cuts their genitals (Twagiramariya and Thurshen 1998:105-106). Doctors have attested to the high numbers of rape victims they examined immediately after the genocide, confirming that two rape cases a day were coming to the clinic. Most victims had vaginal infections and some tested for HIV although it was impossible to tell if they had contacted the infection as a result of rape (Human Rights Watch/Africa 1996:25).
Women then, whether Hutu or Tutsi, suffered horrible acts of rape in various ways.
Rutayisire, referring to Tutsi women, says, “They were beaten, tortured and they suffered the indignity of rape or gang rape in public, some in front of their husbands and children”
(Rutayisire 2005:530). But with the issue of rape, very few cases are recorded as most victims of rape or of sexual abuse generally do not dare reveal their experiences publicly.
Some fear to be rejected by their families and even their communities; others are concerned about jeopardizing their chances of getting married in the future, or fear because their rapists are their neighbours (Human Right Watch/Africa 1996:2). Some victims fear for their lives because of the power and position of their rapists. They do not talk to avoid dishonour or the wrath of their aggressors (Twagiramaliya 1998:105).
Besides sexual related violence, some Rwandan women in mixed marriages underwent peculiar sufferings during or after the tragedy.
4.4.5.2 Conflicts based on intermarriage
Despite the ethnic problem which has created conflict, Rwandan history seems to confirm that intermarriage between Tutsis and Hutus, even among the royal family, was a common phenomenon. This provides reason for questioning the purity of race in Rwanda.
Gatwa reports a case of a former Catholic priest who criticized one colonizer for stressing exclusion in education. The colonizer argued that schooling was to be granted to the children of chiefs who were surely known as Tutsis. The priest ridiculed the colonizer
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who “was unaware that even the son of the king who was just born [Rudahigwa born in 1911 became king in 1931] had for a grandmother, a girl of the common people, Nyiranteko. The latter was from a Bahutu background” (Gatwa 2005:85-86).
It was also noted above that in the time of the First and the Second Republic, intermarriage was regularly practiced among the Hutu elite in positions of leadership. But even among ordinary people intermarriage was a common practice, the tendency being more for Tutsi women to marry Hutu men than the reverse.
However, during the Second Republic, this practice met with some resistance, especially in the military sector. Soldiers were discouraged from marrying Tutsi women, but many of them, especially from high ranking officers, had Tutsi women for concubines. Among the ordinary people, however, there was no rule against mixed marriages. In this Chrétien is justified in saying that “ethnicism was an affair of the elite before it became one of the rural masses, even if its referents are part of Rwandan culture” (Chrétien 2003:333).
Surely there have always been people who were not open to the idea of mixed marriage.
Some of the young boys and young girls wishing to marry across ethnic boundaries faced strong resistance from their parents and relatives. In most cases the resistance was broken and marriage happened. As Taylor has noted,
Conjugal unions between Hutu men and Tutsi women were not at all uncommon in the 1970s and in 1980s, even if they were not the norm, but by the 1990s the negative perception of such unions had become much more pronounced. During the genocide itself, Hutu men with Tutsi wives were often forced to kill their wives in order to prevent their own deaths and a more gruesome death for their wives (Taylor 1999:196).
During the genocide, mixed marriages underwent periods of extreme pain. Tutsi women were killed, sometimes by their in-laws. Others were killed with their children and their husbands when the latter tried to protect their families. Ethnicity divided families and turned members against each other: children killed mothers, husbands killed wives, brothers and cousins killed each other because one was Tutsi, the other Hutu. For some it
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was done willingly; others were forced to do it upon pain of death (Twagiramaliya 1998:111).
In the Rwandan tragedy, each partner in mixed marriages had his/her time to be the cause of insecurity, depending on which social group was targeted. The most painful moments occurred in cases in which Hutu husbands were forced to kill their Tutsi wives, or, after the genocide, Hutu husbands were compelled to surrender their Tutsi wives, and wives were obliged to give in to sexual slavery in exchange for a promise of protection for their Hutu husbands. As Rucyahana observed, most Tutsi men who married Hutu women were killed, in many cases with their children, leaving the wives childless. In Rwandan culture, the children take the tribe of their fathers. Rwanda, like most African countries, is a patrilineal society. The ethnicity is determined by the line of the father. A person could have pure-blood Hutu ancestry on his mother’s side and a very mixed-Hutu-Tutsi ancestry on his father’s side, but as long as the father is considered a Tutsi the child will be considered a Tutsi (Rucyahana 2007:5).
Sometimes the children were killed by their uncles, the brothers of their mothers because the children were Tutsis, and those Hutu widows stayed childless. In many cases these women would request to be killed (this happened to some of my close friends); but not all of them ‘were privileged’ enough to have their request granted. They have to endure pain, trauma and hostility after the death of their husbands and children. Besides losing their husbands and children and sometimes being rejected by their biological families, the Hutu women who were married to Tutsi men are also rejected by their surviving family in-laws. Many Tutsi women who survived the genocide were forced to leave their husbands. In cases when there was resistance, the husband was alleged to be interahamwe and was sent in jail where he would soon find death (Twagiramaliya 1998:111-2).
In a number of Rwandan families intermarriage has brought and continues to generate serious conflicts. It is true that both men and women suffered the genocide but women seem to carry more of its load than men. Some are forced to care for unwanted children
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from a rapist and murderer of their families; others are ostracized by their families, ethnic groups and communities; others are widows who will die childless with deep hostility to their own families who are killers of their husbands and children. Human Rights Watch concurs that the consequences of the genocide are being carried on the backs of women (Human Rights Watch/Africa 1996:69).
The outward appearance of the society to non-Rwandans may seem healthy, but a small incident is often enough to show the reality. One needs only to watch closely what happens during the period of April to July every year, when Rwandans are mourning the victims of the genocide, to understand the pain in their hearts. There is the need for a genuine reconciliation that would heal the wounds and bring peace by restoring trust among the people. Women could play an important role in this process of reconciliation.