TUTSI WOMEN BEAR CHILDREN OF HUTU RAPE
Mr. Death-By-Diversity...
...Says, "Hello,my brothers."Tutsi Women Bear Children, Scars, Of Hutus
Tuesday, September 24, 1996
1996, New York Times News Service
...Says, "Hello,my brothers."KIGALI, Rwanda SOME DAYS, WHEN she looks at her round-faced baby boy,Leonille M. feels like she no longer wants to live.
It is not the child's fault. He peers back at his mother with innocent eyes.But the baby reminds her of all her family members who died in the genocidethat took at least 500,000 lives of Rwandans, most of them Tutsis, in 1994.He also reminds her of the three Hutu soldiers who gang-raped her.
"Everything for me is a tragedy," she said in a recent interviewat a relative's home, surrounded by pictures of the Virgin Mary and thebaby Jesus. "Some days, I say maybe it is better for me to have diedbecause I have nothing in this world."
All across Rwanda, women who were raped during the genocide are strugglingto care for children fathered by their tormentors, often the same men whokilled their families.
By conservative estimates, there are between 2,000 and 5,000 unwanted childrenin Rwanda whose mothers were raped during the civil war and genocide, accordingto a new report by Human Rights Watch. These children, not yet 2, are knownin Rwanda as "enfants mauvais souvenir" - children of bad memories.
They are the legacy of a seldom-talked-about horror during the violencethat racked Rwanda for three months in the spring of 1994. While Tutsisand moderate Hutus were being rounded up and killed by troops of the Hutu-ledgovernment and allied militias, hundreds of thousands of women were alsobeing raped or forced into sexual servitude.
The militias were fueled by propaganda that portrayed Tutsi women as high-classseductresses - beautiful women who would corrupt a pure Hutu society. Duringthe genocide, women were raped by individuals, gang-raped, raped with sharpenedstakes and gun barrels, and held in sexual slavery, sometimes alone, sometimesin groups, the report says. In many cases, the genitals and breasts of rapevictims were mutilated.
Almost all the women were raped after witnessing the deaths of their lovedones. About 35 percent of these women became pregnant as a result of theirordeals, according to a survey of 304 rape victims by the current Tutsi-ledgovernment, which won the civil war and took over later in 1994.
Since abortion is illegal here, many of these women resorted to back-alleyabortions rather than bear the children, the report quotes health workersas saying. Others abandoned the babies or gave them away to orphanages.In a few instances, the women even resorted to infanticide.
The women who decided to give birth and to keep the children have faceda battery of new troubles. Most are in dire financial straits, living oncharity and squatting in abandoned houses. Most not only lost their husbandsand families in the war but also their husbands' farms, which were theironly means of survival.
"They have nothing, and they have no houses to live in," saidBeatrice Mukansinga, a social worker with the Barakabaho association, acharity group that is supporting 156 rape victims in Kigali.
Others have become outcasts in their own communities. A woman in this positionis often accused of being a "wife of the interhamwe," the Hutumilitia that did most of the killing. Many have had to wage battles withtheir own families to keep the babies, who are seen as "little interhamwe"by relatives.
Since widows and rape victims are often stigmatized in Rwandan society,many women have found it impossible to find new husbands or to begin a newlife. Many contracted AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases fromthe rapists, Mukansinga said.
But the psychological toll has been even worse. Often these women sufferfrom extreme guilt for having survived as sexual captives instead of havingdied with their husbands and families.
And some of the rape victims who had babies as a result say it is hard forthem to muster affection for their babies. Godence M., 20, from Butare,said she would gladly give up her 19-month-old boy, Ingabire, to anyonewho was willing to raise him. No one has offered, she said.
She was the only member of her family to escape the killings in Butare.A child of a mixed Hutu and Tutsi marriage, she walked for days, passingherself off as a Hutu, until a militia member demanded her identity cardat a roadblock and discovered that, in the eyes of the law, she was Tutsi.He offered her a choice: she could die at once or agree to be his sexualslave.
For a month, she was imprisoned in his house and repeatedly raped. Whenthe man tired of her, he turned her over to a gang of other militia members.They took her to a mass grave and tried to kill her with a machete blowto the back of her head, she said. She survived by hiding among the bodiesfor several days, pretending to be dead, until soldiers from the Tutsi rebelarmy liberated the region.
When she later discovered that she was pregnant, she wanted an abortion,she said, but was afraid she would die from the procedure. Now she barelyhas enough food to feed herself and the child.
Her Tutsi neighbors have not been kind to her, she said. They accuse herof having collaborated with the Hutu extremists. "It's a big problemfor me, because everyone knows I had a child from the interhamwe,"she said. "They say I'm a wife of the interhamwe."
Leonille M., 35, the mother of the little boy, says she is also no strangerto depression, nor to the cruel barbs of her Tutsi neighbors. Her husband,mother, and four sisters were killed during the genocide. She had managedto escape with her four children, relying on Hutus who were opposed to thekillings to hide them.
She had left her children with a Hutu family and was hiding alone in anunfinished house in Kanombe, just outside Kigali, when a government soldierdiscovered her and raped her. Two others came after him.
Outside her house, her children played in a dirt courtyard. The youngestchild's inarticulate cries mixed with the laughter of his brothers and sisters.
"When he is old enough, I'll call them all together and tell them whathappened to me," she said. Tears welled in her eyes. "What canI do? I had him. What can I do? I have to love him."
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