Rwanda's mother and son genocidaires

She’ll die in prison.

The only woman indicted for rape and genocide at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, was sentenced to life imprisonment on 24 June 2011. Her son, Arsene Shalom Ntahobali, called ‘Shalom’ (meaning peace), was also given a life sentence for rape, genocide and crimes against humanity. Shalom’s wife, Beatrice Munyenyezi, having fled to the US and claiming asylum, is also now in jail; she was indicted for falsifying her refugee application, and charged with encouraging rapes and slaughters during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Through luck and guile, I was able to speak to Nyiramasuhuko alone which no other journalist or lawyer, other than her own, has been able to do. She was incarcerated at the Detention Center of the ICTR where she was allowed no interviews, only visits by her family. She was awaiting trial that first time I saw her in September 2003. She complained that she was lonely, being the only woman there. ‘It’s very difficult for me. I don’t have my own doctor. I do get to see Shalom, but only once a week,’ she said. It was reported that Nyrimasahuko’s main concern was for Shalom. Although she had special female guards, she said, ‘They don’t speak French and I don’t like them.’

The 57-year old, portly woman, who sat before me, her guard having left us alone, insisted, ‘I’m not guilty of rape and crimes against humanity.’ She, being a part of the Hutu political elite, claimed that the 1994 Rwandan genocide was committed by the former Rwandan rebels from Uganda, the Rwanda Patriotic Front that now controls the country. ‘It was the Tutsis who massacred the Hutus,’ she said. Nearly all the defendants and defense witnesses made this claim.

Dressed in a navy-blue, nondescript dress only brightened by a floral scarf around her throat, Nyiramasuhuko spoke with me cordially. I attributed her warm attitude to the fact that, as the only interviewer to see her, she hoped I’d tell the world of her innocence; she offered to give me documents to prove it. But when I returned the next day to get those documents, my entry to the Detention Center was barred by the UN Detention Facility Commanding Officer. He was distressed that I had previously gained access to the Center.

In the years since that meeting Nyiramasuhuko’s appearance changed dramatically and accusations against her were increasingly proven. She gradually lost a great deal of weight and dressed in brighter, more flattering colours with her head wrapped in African fashion. One of her judges, Arlette Ramaroson, told me in her chambers, ‘She’s now wearing a gold cross around her neck; I never saw that before.’ Numerous witnesses testified about Nyrimasuhuko’s involvement in the Rwandan genocide which lasted over a brief 100-day period, killing 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, mostly with machetes. Between 250,000 and 500,000 women were raped, a minimum of 2,500 a day, many with machetes, rifle butts and broken bottles.

As the former minister of Family and Women’s Affairs, Nyiramasahuko, instead of protecting women, incited her son and others to rape and kill Tutsi women as she stood in a military uniform at roadblocks, sometimes carrying a machine gun. She even included in her diary, admitted as an exhibit, lists of victims killed during the genocide, with, in a different ink, checkmarks after each name. On the same pages there were also domestic jottings detailing what she spent on vegetables, sugar and rice.

‘She makes me ashamed to be a woman,’ said Angelina Muganza, a former Rwandan minister of Gender, when I told her that I interviewed Nyiramasuhuko. Under Muganza’s leadership, a five-year program was initiated to improve women’s rights, including their right inherit land, which they previously were unable to do. Having grown up in a Ugandan refugee camp, Muganza returned, as many others did, to serve her country. She always greeted me warmly when I saw her during my many trips to Rwanda to do ethics and gender-sensitivity trainings for the justice system.

The Presiding Judge on The Prosecutor v. Nyiramasuhuko et. al. case, William H. Sekule, said ‘evidence clearly established Nyiramasuhuko’s direct role in ordering Interhamwe (the Hutu militia) to rape Tutsi women…..and (she) is responsible as a superior for rapes committed by members of the Interhamwe.’ The previous landmark Akayesu case at the ICTR established that rape is a crime against humanity and superiors will be prosecuted under the theory of ‘command responsibility’ for the acts of their inferiors. But the presiding judge also said that the mother and son defendants could not be charged for genocide for the rapes because the ‘Indictment was defective in failing to plead rape as genocide.’

The Trial Chamber also found that Nyiramasahuko along with her son, accompanied by Interhamwe and soldiers went to government offices where Tutsis had sought shelter and assaulted, raped, abducted and later killed them. ‘Both Nyiramasahuko and Ntahobali ordered killings. They also ordered rapes. Ntahobali further committed rapes, and Nyrimasuhuko aided and abetted rapes,’ said the Presiding Judge.

The US State Department lauded the ICTR’s verdict and said that, ‘This ruling is an important step in providing justice…for the Rwandan people and the international community…this conviction is a…milestone because it demonstrates that rape is a crime of violence and it can be used as a tool of war by both men and women.’ Hopefully, these words are sincere and not just guilt for having persuaded the international community not to interfere when the UN was warned that there was going to be a genocide.

Mother and son were tried in the largest and longest case at the ICTR. It included four other Hutu leaders accused of genocide. All were from Butare, a city in Southern Rwanda, near where Nyrimasuhuko was born in humble circumstances. She later became a lawyer and married the rector of the National University in Butare, formerly the president of the National Assembly. Nyiramasuhuko had four children and became part of the presidential inner circle, making her a principal political personality.

Arrested in Kenya in 1997, Nyiramasuhuko was later transferred to the ICTR along with Shalom. In 2001, their trial began. The case lasted ten years. It took so long, not only because there were 189 witnesses but also because every witness had to be cross-examined by each of the six defendants’ counsels. Nyiramasuhuko’s lead lawyer, Nicole Bergevin, initially pleasant, later refused to speak me, possibly because she learned I had talked to her client.

I traveled to Butare, a two-hour drive from the capital, Kigali, to see where the atrocities had taken place and where Nyiramasuhuko and Shalom had lived. The family owned and lived in the Hotel Uhiliro, where Shalom set up a roadblock and raped and killed Tutsis. Their house, which had overlooked the National University, was razed to the ground shortly after the Rwandan Patriotic Front, comprised of Tutsis from the Ugandan diaspora, had stopped the genocide. Butare, long considered the intellectual capital of the country, is the site of the National University of Rwanda, and the National Institute of Scientific Research. The National Museum is close by as is a major genocide site that was a former technical school. It houses 50,000 skeletons and skulls, many of young children, who sought refuge in the former school. The site incongruously sits on a lush green hill that overlooks a flowering valley below. The hill, if not its people, has retained its quiet calm for centuries.

The only woman charged with rape and genocide at an international tribunal, Nyiramasuhuko was also convicted of conspiracy to commit genocide, of ordering the killing of Tutsis, extermination and persecution as crimes against humanity, rape as a crime against humanity as a superior of the Interhamwe, whose members raped Tutsis and outrages upon the personal dignity as a war crime. Shalom was convicted of genocide, extermination in killing Tutsis and a young girl at the Hotel Ihuliro roadblock and ordering the massacre of Tutsis taking refuge at government offices and schools, rape and persecution as crimes against humanity and violence to life and outrages upon personal dignity as war crimes. Also given a life sentence was the former mayor of a Butare commune. A former police commander was given a 30-year sentence, a former prefect of Butare got 25 years and former mayor of another Butare commune was sentenced to 35 years.

As a former prosecutor on the case, Gregory Townsend, said to me, ‘It was a long road with many participants but we got the just result.’

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Copyright ©2011 Elizabeth Barad
* Elizabeth Barad practices international human rights law, gender and intellectual property law. As Chair of the New York City Bar's Rwanda Legal Task Force, Elizabeth organised two ethics seminar and a gender-sensitivity workshop for the Rwandan justice system.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.