Girls Will Be Boys: Mass Rape and Democracy
BY LUCY JANE LANG
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Pauline Nyiramasuhuko is currently facing trial at the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda charged with genocide, complicity in genocide, conspiracy
to commit genocide, rape as genocide, and crimes against humanity.
In addition to being only the second war criminal
charged with rape as genocide, she is the first woman
ever to be tried for crimes against humanity. The roles
of rape during war, and of a female political figure in the
commission of mass rape, underscore vital points about
the changing nature of gender and power. While crimes
against women are perhaps being taken more seriously,
the integration of women into political structures clearly
does not prevent such crimes from happening.
Nyiramasuhuko’s trial follows the 1998 trial of Jean-
Paul Akayesu for rape as genocide during the 1994 massacre
in Rwanda. Akayesu’s conviction marked a vital
transition from the understanding of rape as a tool during
warfare — shifting it from a “crime against humanity” to
“genocide,” a crime against a race. Rape is now considered
genocidal because of its strategic use to infiltrate
ethnic lines and terminate persecuted groups. Employed
as a eugenic method from the Book of Genesis to the
present, before 1998 rape had never been singled out
from other forms of ethnic conflict and warfare.
While the International Criminal Tribunal convicted
Paul Akayesu of contributing to the strategic use of the
rape of 250,000 Tutsi women during the Rwandan massacre,
the New York Times politely neglected to mention
the word “rape” in the headline of its brief article on his
groundbreaking conviction. The editors sensationalistically
remembered, however, to include it in the title of the
Times weekly magazine’s 12-page cover story on Pauline
Nyiramasuhuko’s trial: “How could a woman incite
Rwanda’s sex-crime genocide? The Minister of Rape.”
It may be exciting in a voyeuristic way to consider the
idea that a woman could be so un-feminine as to order
the commission of hundreds of thousands of rapes. But
what is the implication — that newly enfranchised
female politicos should conceive of more innovative
ways to commit genocide? Faced with a woman abusing
the power she was given, we are astounded to realize that
she is capable of committing heinous crimes. How could
a woman incite Rwanda’s sex-crime genocide? It was
remarkably similar to how despotic rulers have done it
throughout the history of the world: with brainwashed
armies, broken bottles, banana stamens, machetes, and
an ideologically induced hatred of the victims that dehumanized
(and, in this case, defeminized) them in the eyes
of their oppressors.
The more informative question, therefore, might be:
why does anyone incite genocide? The Rwandan genocide,
like a startling number of other twentieth-century
instances, was the result of animosity against what Amy
Chua, in World On Fire, calls a “market-dominant
minority,” an ethnic group that is more economically
successful than the surrounding majority. This type of
animosity is often the result of attempting to marry
democracy with free markets.
The historic hostility in Rwanda between the Hutu
(85 percent of the population) and the Tutsi (14 percent)
was heightened when democratization hit the country in
response to Western pressure in the 1990s.
Democracy in Rwanda divided the Hutu from the
Tutsi along ethnic lines more sharply than ever before.
While intermarriage had once been common, and successful
Hutu were able to “become Tutsi” through economic
and social upward mobility, the two ethnicities
now became completely polarized. Playing to the resentments
of the majority, Hutu politicians exacerbated hostilities
in order to be elected. Academically trained ideologists
then co-opted radio stations and other mass
media in order to spread anti-Tutsi propaganda.
For the hundred days of the massacre, Rwandan
morality was entirely transformed. Sanctioned by the
democratically elected authorities and collectively committed,
the atrocities were represented as a moral obligation
— a deed so admirable that in that brief period,
800,000 people were massacred, usually by means of
the most un-mechanized, “personal” weapons imaginable.
No specially trained SS was needed, nor were gas
chambers or even firearms: a huge proportion of the
ordinary Hutu population simply hacked their victims
to death — often after raping them.
The first three commandments of the document that
prescribed this new morality, the “Ten Commandments
of the Hutu,” proscribed sexual relations between the
two ethnicities. Yet rape was an important element of
the Hutu strategy. It was considered distinct from the
sexual relationships banned by the Commandments,
and was continually espoused by the military as a
means of eradicating the Tutsi. The polarization of
Rwandan society largely manifested itself in sexual
divisiveness, separating the ethnicities via the separation
of the genders. In outlawing inter-ethnic sex for
pleasure but advocating inter-ethnic sex for pain, the
Hutu regime made rape a duty, not a crime.
No one has wondered how Hutu men were able to tie
Tutsi men’s testicles to motorcycles and then drive off,
leaving them to die of blood loss. To expect women in
power to exercise greater humanity is to demand of
them what would have been contrary to democratic
imperatives. Nyiramasuhuko may be an aberration in
her lack of empathy, but no more so than the male Hutu
leaders who, like her, were selected by Rwandan
democracy: psychopaths would, in the context of resentment
against a market-dominant minority, have a decided
electoral advantage over more humane politicians.
The issue currently facing the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda is not gender but genocide, and in
this under-studied, under-noticed recent event that the
world’s other democracies did nothing to stop, there may
be new answers to the most difficult questions that have
been asked of the more famous holocausts of twentieth
century history.
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Lucy Jane Lang is graduating
from Swarthmore College this month. |
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