Rwanda genocide: 'I am a mother - I killed some children's parents'
Tens of thousands of women took part in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda but their role is rarely spoken about, and reconciliation with their family is hard. Journalist Natalia Ojewska has been talking to some female perpetrators in prison.
"When [the two] fell to the ground, I picked up a stick and said: 'Tutsis must die!'. Then I hit one of them and then the other one... I was one of the killers," the 70-year-old says.These were two among 800,000 murders of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus that took place over 100 days. Although the identities of the assassins have never been established, Hutu extremists immediately accused Tutsi rebels of carrying out the attack. Within hours, thousands of Hutus, indoctrinated by decades of hateful ethnic propaganda, joined in with the well-organised killing.
Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, former minister for the family and women's development, was one of the few Rwandan women who took on a powerful leadership position in the male-dominated political scene. She played a critical role in orchestrating the genocide. There are no separate rehabilitation programmes for female genocidaires and many struggle with reconciling what they have done with traditional perceptions of a woman's role.Martha Mukamushinzimana is a mother of five children, who secretly carried the burden of her crime for 15 years, before she decided to report herself to the judicial authorities in 2009 as she could no longer live with the burden of her crimes.
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