Prison nuns exemplify chilling dimensions to carnage

IF YOU visit the vastly overcrowded jail in Kigali, capital of the tiny African state of Rwanda, you may see two nuns in their traditional uniform in the women's section are not there as social workers or spiritual advisers, nor are they running a food programme in the jail. They are inmates. They are there awaiting trial on charges of genocide.

They are merely the most shocking illustration of the extent to which hundreds of thousands of Hutus in Rwanda took part in the massacre of the Tutsi population of Rwanda just over two years ago they killed 800,000 of the 900,000 Tutsi population in a little over six weeks.

It is hard to identify what is most shocking about what happened in Rwanda the scale of the killing the brutality of the massacres the involvement of perhaps half the five million Hutu population directly or indirectly in the slaughter the indifference of the rest of the world the seeming inevitability that it will all happen again in the near future in neighbouring Burundi which has the same ethnic mix the only difference will be that there will be mutual genocide in Burundi.

Among the most chilling dimensions is the involvement of hundreds of thousands of women in the massacres as the perpetrators of genocide.

This is recorded in terrifying detail in abort complied by Africa Rights "Rwanda Not so innocent When women become killers". Chilling not because women were the main perpetrators of the greatest crime committed against humanity since the second World War, with the exception of the Khymer Rouge massacres in Cambodia in the 1970s (women were not the main perpetrators). Chilling because the involvement of thousands of women affronts an assumption that only men are capable of such savagery.

The Africa Rights report notes that "huge numbers of civilian administrators, journalists, businessmen, civil servants, academics, schoolteachers, students, housewives, doctors, nurses, peasants, traders, judges, priests, nuns, staff of local NGOs (aid agencies) and employees of international agencies were involved, both directly and indirectly".

The report continues "Some women, including young girls in their teens, were participants in the carnage, backing other women and children, and sometimes even men, to death ... They participated in massacres and in the murder of their neighbours as well as strangers. They joined the crowds that surrounded churches, hospitals and other places of refuge, wielding machetes, nail studded clubs and spears. They excelled as `cheerleaders' of the genocide, singing and ululating the killers into action.

"Many educated women, including teachers, civil servants and nurses made lists of people to be killed, which they gave to soldiers, militia and local government officials organising the pogroms.

Women told the killers where people were hiding, screaming out their names as the terrified quarry ran for their lives. Some women provided the petrol with which people were burnt alive, either individual families or groups of refugees huddled in mosques and the buildings of parishes.

Educated women bear a special responsibility for the breach and depth of women's participation in the killings. There were two women ministers in the interim government a regime whose raison d'etre was genocide and the elimination of political opponents. Both women promoted the genocide for Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, ironically the minister for women and the family, the participation was brutally direct. She regularly visited places where refugees had been congregated and personally supervised the selection of hundreds of Tutu men for the slaughterhouse...

"Educated women of every category participated in the genocide. Some female nurses handed over to the soldiers and militia patients and refugees who had come to hide in their hospitals. They also colluded in the murder of their colleagues.

"More than any other profession, teachers played a key role ... Even nuns were involved. A number of nuns are not only accused of closing the door on their desperate parishioners and other refugees but of identifying and handing people over to the killers and collaborating with them in other ways. One nun, Sister Julienne Kizito, of a convent in Sovu, Butare, spent the three months of the genocide in the company of those carrying out the killings in Sovu, handing them the petrol with which they burnt people alive in front of her.

"Many of these women are living in comfortable exile in Zaire, Kenya and Europe. Some of them have been employed by international organisations in the camps for refugees in Zaire, Tanzania and Burundi. Women who have killed have been given responsibilities for the welfare of" the refugees, including that of traumatised children. Some of the nuns are being protected by the church."

THERE were many women heroines too, of course. Felicite Niyitegeka, a Hutu Catholic lay worker in Gisenyi, systematically helped Tutsis to flee across the border, although she had been informed by her brother in the army that the "authorities" were aware of what she was doing. When the militia finally came to her she had 30 refugees in her house. The militia said she would be spared but that the refugees would be killed. She said they would all stay together, in life or in death. The militia shot the refugees one by one in front of her.

When the slaughter was over she asked that she herself be killed. Before killing her, the militia leader asked that she pray for his soul.

That story concerning Felicite Niyitegeka was contained in a telefax sent by a member of the White Fathers order to his headquarters in Brussels (it is recorded in the seminal work on the genocide and its background, The Rwanda Crisis History of a Genocide, by a French historian, Gerard Prunier).

Of course, women were massively the victims of the genocide as well hundreds of thousands of women were raped, mutilated (often breasts were cut off) and slaughtered.

Liberata Mukasakindi, a 37 year old peasant women and mother of two, saw her husband being killed at the start of the genocide. Heavily pregnant, she fled with her three children. She gave birth to her fourth child and had to seek refuge with an elderly Hutu woman, who initially appeared sympathetic. The elderly women killed the infant, and her sons attacked one of Liberata's other children they started macheting Theogene on the head. I literally saw his brains spill out of his head. She and her surviving child were thrown in a pit latrine along with her dead child's body. (Africa Rights report Rwanda Death, Despair and Defiance) Genocide is a crime under international law. An international court has been established to try those who have been identified as the main perpetrators of the genocide. The evidence against thousands of suspects is overwhelming. To date, not a single person has been tried.