The Aspect of Gender in the Rwandan Genocide
The year 1994 marked the beginning of a bloody mass murder of the Tutsis of Rwanda which was coined as the Rwandan Genocide. The Hutus and the Tutsis were two of the ethnic groups situated in Rwanda. The country was home to nearly 85% Hutus; however, the minority group of Tutsis carried a lineage of dominance throughout history. After being overthrown by Hutus from the country to other neighboring countries such as Uganda, the Tutsis had formed an exile group known as the Rwanda Patriotic Front. There had been ongoing conflict with the RPF who made attempts to invade Rwanda, although peace had been established a few years following their invasions. The genocide, however, was a result of one specific incident that occurred to the Hutus’ President, Juvenal Habyarimana. He had been assassinated. Rwandans found no one but the RPF to blame on this matter. As a result, this leads to the killings of more than a million lives in 100 days. Although it is clear to the extent that the Rwandan destruction of 1994 was highly motivated by ideologies of ethnicity, the aspect of sex and gender was seemingly less of an important facet of the event. The view of gender was probably the most convoluted and versatile component in the Rwandan Genocide than other historical mass exterminations due to a multitude of many reasons.
To begin, after the war, there was a considerable amount of tension in the roles of men. Poor, Rwandese men were already struggling from the start when their options to work for the economy were fleeing from them. Most of their options included clearing farmland, obtaining land from previous owners, or even traveling elsewhere in search of land. This directly impacted younger Hutu men and faced them with a “gender crisis.” Although some Rwandese men had the chance to be enrolled in the army, they merely made up a fraction of those who were without a job. “Without land or employment, young men cannot advance in life, they cannot marry or achieve the social status of their parents.”
As suggested by the statement, one can imagine how the severity of this issue impacted the men. Therefore, the genocide presented Hutu men with the opportunity to murder Tutsi men and take up all their land and other possessions. It is also very likely that the genocide was an excuse by Rwanda’s radical rulers to unravel the gender crisis in Rwanda. They were attempting to offer these resources to Hutu men which they could not have been offered by the government. It is believed that the genocide was probably the answer to many problems such as the desire to ethnically cleanse the Tutsi minority as well as the economic threats that were building on their Hutu men.
There appeared to be a gender-selective targeting of males during the most malicious parts of the genocide due to a variety of factors. The underlying reason for males being the main targets had mostly to do with the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF). It was either that they were affiliated with RPF or that the Hutu militiamen desired to prevent them from being affiliated with them in the future. Tutsi men with great wealth and education were despised of the most, and they were killed the fastest. Typical ways of capturing these men would be from parishes where the traditional game of macabre would be played in the selection of Tutsi men to be chosen for the slaughterhouse. Men were strategically picked. This severely impacted the Tutsi community by widowing their women and causing thousands of infants to be orphaned.
On another note, the lives of Tutsi boys were at greater stake than Tutsi girls. The Hutu men wanted to take all measures to prevent these boys from growing influenced in joining the RPF. This included investigating infants and determining their gender. Boys were shown no mercy. Their mothers were sometimes even commanded to kill their sons which would often result in psychological trauma. To escape their sons from this virulent act, the mothers would make their sons appear as girls. The girls, on the other hand, would be spared was in the hope of them marrying Hutu men and continuing their legacy.
The Hutu militiamen often followed a very nonsensical way to single out these men. Coming from a radio broadcast, this was out for the public to hear and identify a Tutsi. “How can you distinguish the cockroach (referring to the Tutsi) from the Hutu? You have several methods to choose from. The cockroach has a gap between his front teeth. The cockroach has narrow heels. The cockroach has eight pairs of ribs. The cockroach has stretch marks on his thighs near the buttocks. The cockroach has a thin nose. The cockroach’s hair is not so curly. The cockroach’s skull is long at the back, and his forehead is sloped. The cockroach is tall, and there is haughtiness in his eyes. The cockroach has a pronounced Adam’s apple.”
These checkpoints were absurd because it was still difficult for the militia to apply it in practice and it even caused the wrong person to be targeted. For example, in an event on June 14, militiamen were set out to specifically hunt down educated Tutsi men who could be categorized as businessmen, students, or other forms of professionals likely to partake in the RPF. They believed that they could establish the ethnicity of these men based on these descriptions, but instead, they resulted in the killing of three Hutu men who appeared tall.
It is most commonly known that men are the actual perpetrators of war and genocides are often known to be as a male crime. Women, on the other hand, are commonly the victims. Men are recruited to war to kill to protect the nation as well as killing to defend the women and children of the nation. Women are expected to support these male defenders in their roles. Nevertheless, the roles of women in the Rwandan genocide were far more fascinating in their participation in this ethnic violence. “I had seen war before, but I had never seen a woman carrying a baby on her back kill another woman with a baby on her back”. The quote gives away that women, too, were perpetrators in the genocide. Women portrayed a significant role in being instigators, organizers, and architects (of violence), as well as playing discrete characters as killers. Women perpetrators usually raided homes but were also seen killing directly with an array of weapons. Statistics show 3,000 Rwandese women were imprisoned in 2004 due to the involvement of a series of genocidal crimes including raiding victims and their homes and leading attack groups.
Examples of some of the female genocidaires known for their acts of notoriety include Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, Rose Karushara, Odette Nyirabagenzi, and Athanasie Mukabatana, and Sister Juliene Kizito. However, the most prominent of them all was Pauline Nyiramasuhuko. She was held responsible for the daily visiting of refugees and directing which of Tutsi men should be sent to get exterminated. She also participated in the gruesome act of encouraging her men to rape and murder women in Butare during the genocide. On the other hand, Rose Karushara was known as a strong and built woman who had viciously beat her victims before they were sent off to get killed by the Rwandan militia group known as the Interahamwe. It is noted that nearly 5,000 lives were taken under her rule. During Odette Nyirabagenzi, Tutsi men from the state of Rugenge were captured and abducted. These men were abducted from churches in St. Famille and St. Paul and they were personally hand-selected by Nyirabagenzi to get slaughtered.
However, the most interesting perpetrator seems to be Athanasie Mukabatana. “When this girl saw the attack arrive near the hospital, she quickly jumped over the gate of the hospital to get into the compound. She didn’t even wait for the gate to be opened. You could see the enthusiasm this girl had for finishing these sick Tutsis. She had a machete and went into the hospital with the other assassins. She made the sick Tutsis go out, often dragging them out. And once outside, she killed them with a strike from the machete. She made several trips and all the dead were on the hospital grass”. Last but not the least, Sister Juliene Kizito was a prominent nun who worked for hand in hand with the perpetrators in Butare serving them petrol to burn her victims. Other women perpetrators also played a significant role in forcefully offering Tutsi women their destiny as sex slaves and mistresses for the Rwandese army men and other Hutu men.
“Rape and other forms of violence were directed primarily against the Tutsi women during the Rwandan genocide, because of both their gender and their ethnicity.” “Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, for example, kept the daughters of Bihara, a Tutsi businessman from Butare,… at her house for her son Chalome to rape.” Although Tutsi women were seemingly more attractive than Hutu women, there appeared to be other underlying motivations for them to be agents of rape. Several of these women featured outstanding degrees of greatness in both their economic and public lives as well as asserting what they favored in their private lives. Many of them were fairly educated and financially stable in reputable occupations. Rwandans perceived this as a threat amongst their communities and disliked the level of empowerment these females felt. They perceived themselves as too good for Rwandese males. Consequently, these men took this opportunity to sabotage the image of these women and took a step to re-configure gender in society. Furthermore, some Hutu women were also raped because they had sought to defend their Tutsi neighbors. The consequence that followed the victims of rape was what was called “forced marriage.” The term indicates a type of sexual slavery where the woman had to reside with her rapist at his house. The duration of her stay included the course of the genocide and sometimes, even after the genocide. Many of the rape victims resulted in bearing a child with her rapist. This was the cause of “enforced pregnancy.” The idea states that the victim is forced to carry the child of her rapist who has gone through ethnic cleansing. The child is ethnically cleansed because his blood contains the rapist’s blood.
On the other hand, women who sought to escape from an incurring rape attempted to follow precautionary measures. In “A Gendered Genocide: Tutsi Women and Hutu Extremists in the 1994 Rwanda Genocide” by Christopher C. Taylor, he reports, “According to my interlocuter she and others, in order to increase the “bother” that a potential rapist might incur, had taken to wearing tight nylon shorts over their underwear when they went out in public. When I remarked that such a measure was hardly a lock and key, she explained to me that it was more of a deterrent than a measure of absolute prevention. It would take a rapist more time to disrobe her, she explained, and in those added seconds she might find a way to defend herself or to escape”.
In addition to being rape victims, women’s roles as victims were grand in four different scenarios. The primary way that they were selected would have to do with their affiliation with other Tutsi men (being their wives, etc.), and most outstandingly, if they belonged to those who were wealthy and rich. Second, they were a part of the root-and-branch extermination. If extermination is said to be “root-and-branch,” then it existed a pattern of gendercide killings. The root-and-branch extermination of genocidal killing was most prominent during the first weeks of the genocide. A third factor that determined the end of these women was caused by their belief of being spared by the militia if they left their Tutsi men. And finally, women were wiped out if they were believed to be the last of the Tutsis following the gendercide massacres of male Tutsis. With further examination, it had been discovered that most of these women perished during the root-and-branch period. Many sought refuge in religious sites, but only to be tracked down by the Hutu militiamen. It remains a question yet to be answered of the official time it was announced that women were targets. It is reported that in the first few weeks of the genocide, the law passed that solely Tutsi men were to be annihilated while exempting the others (Tutsi females) in the community. The gendercide massacre against males only occurred between five to six weeks into the genocide until females were added.
An outstanding genocide feature would have to be that of the case of mixed marriages. According to the ten commandments of the ‘Muhutu,’ the first states the prohibition of his interaction with Umututsikazi (Tutsi woman). The first commandment reads what follows, “Every Muhutu must know that Umututsikazi (Tutsi woman), wherever she may be, is in the pay of the Tutsi people”. Therefore, a Hutu man who married a Tutsi woman was considered a betrayer to his community, and his consequences followed. Mixed marriages often had two common cases; one was which where the husband was a Hutu and another which he was a Tutsi. Rwandan society followed patrilineal bonds which stated that the ethnicity of the father would be the dominating ethnicity. Therefore, the consequence of a Tutsi man who married a Hutu woman would mean that his wife would have a great chance of being spared. Their children would be named “children of the enemy” and were slaughtered by the hands of their mother. Contrariwise, in a case where the husband was Hutu, he would be commanded to take the life of his Tutsi wife to protect the life of his children. Their children were then named “Hutsis.” Additionally, extremists Hutu fathers would even annihilate their children because they still carried a portion of Tutsi blood.
In conclusion, in 1994, for over 100 days, the Rwandan Genocide caused a mass murder of the Tutsis of Rwanda. Ethnic tension had always seemed to be an issue but it had been increasingly sparked by the assassination of Juvenal Habyarimana. Although ethnicity played a major role in the genocide, the aspect of gender represented a deeper level of motivation to swipe away the Tutsis of Rwanda. Although at first only the men were targeted, the women were soon to follow as the Hutu began targeting them due to the level of empowerment these females felt in their lives. The men were executed due to obvious reasons such as their affiliation with the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) or to prevent them from becoming affiliated in the future. Educated and wealthy Tutsi men were the worst enemies perceived by their counterparts of Hutu men and many were after the land and possessions of Tutsi men in response to the declining opportunities presented in the economy. It is reported that women were not only equal to but may have even surpassed men in terms of death rates. In the case of children, Tutsi boys were executed in the fear that they may grow up to be the soldiers of the enemy and little girls would be spared in hopes of getting them married to Hutu men. On another note, the destiny of children would be based of the ethnicity of their father. Hutu fathers declared children that would be spared.
Bibliography
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