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`But She Was Pregnant!': The Woman-and-Mother Narrative in Genocide

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  • `But She Was Pregnant!': The Woman-and-Mother Narrative in Genocide

    `But She Was Pregnant!': The Woman-and-Mother Narrative in Genocide
    by Sara E. Brown

    http://www.armenianweekly.com/2012/03/02/woman-and-mother-narrative/
    March 2, 2012

    Although the Rwandan Genocide ended in 1994, controversy over
    culpability continues even today. Beatrice Munyenyezi is accused of
    lying about her role in the genocide in order to gain U.S.
    citizenship. The prosecution accused her of being a member of and
    leading the killing militias. Her defense - shockingly brazen - is that as
    a woman and a mother, she was incapable of committing mass murder.


    Children posing for the author in the northeastern region of Rwanda, a
    stronghold for extremist ideology leading up to the genocide.
    Can one be a good mother and still be capable of committing mass
    murder? If history is any indication, then yes. The most well-known
    case is that of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, Beatrice's own mother-in-law,
    who used a similar defense. This past June, Nyiramasuhuko made
    headlines when she was found guilty by the International Criminal
    Tribunal for Rwanda for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war
    crimes. Refusing to learn from past experience, Munyenyezi's wayward
    defense strategy mistakenly hinges on her gender and her status as a
    mother to prove her innocence.

    In 1995, Munyenyezi appeared before U.S. officials in Nairobi, Kenya,
    seeking refuge for herself and her three small daughters in the United
    States. Like the tens of thousands of resettled refugees who arrive in
    the U.S. every year, Munyenyezi wanted a chance at a new life for her
    family. In 1998, she arrived in New Hampshire. In July 2003, in a
    district courtroom far away from Rwanda, she became a naturalized
    citizen of the United States. Years later, Munyenyezi's murky past
    began to catch up with her. A federal investigation was launched to
    determine whether Munyenyezi had lied on U.S. documents about her
    participation in the Rwandan Genocide. Survivors and convicted
    perpetrators of the genocide had come forward and identified her as
    instrumental in the genocide, and a federal indictment soon followed.

    Last week, Munyenyezi returned to the New Hampshire District Court to
    stand trial. The defense team spent a significant portion of its
    opening arguments establishing a `woman-and-mother narrative' that all
    but stripped Munyenyezi of her agency and capacity to act. The
    woman-and-mother narrative is, at its core, an essentialist belief
    that a woman who is also a mother cannot perpetrate crimes during
    genocide because she is just that - a woman and a mother. Put simply,
    thanks to widespread beliefs about motherly compassion, gender norms,
    and patriarchal thinking, it is assumed that women and mothers don't
    hurt others, don't loot or steal, and certainly do not kill. The
    defense did not provide any other reasons - no moral or religion-based
    compunctions, no allusions to moderate thinking on the part of their
    client. No, it was enough for the defense to assert her womanhood and
    her motherhood, and her consequent inability to perpetrate genocide.

    Rather than challenge head-on the accusations pertaining to her
    participation in the selection of women for rape at a roadblock set up
    outside of her residence, Munyenyezi's defense attempted to pound a
    square block through a round hole. She wasn't just painted into the
    background of the horrific events that ravaged Rwanda in 1994; she was
    erased from the picture entirely.

    Furthering their woman-and-mother narrative, the defense insisted that
    Muyenyezi was simply too busy caring for her baby and managing her
    pregnancy. Yes, Munyenyezi was in her first and second trimesters of
    pregnancy during the genocide. But does that render her absent from
    the unfolding horrors, or without agency to perpetrate crimes? I wish
    it could be said with conviction that pregnant women can't commit
    atrocities, but my research into Rwanda indicates otherwise. I have
    interviewed incarcerated women who were pregnant, breastfeeding, or
    both during the Rwandan Genocide, and still perpetrated crimes.
    Pregnancy does not inoculate women from extremism, and motherhood does
    not shield them from the sensitization campaigns that mobilized so
    many to perpetrate genocide in Rwanda.

    Gendered assumptions about female agency and conduct during times of
    violence ignore the fact that thousands of women have been tried for
    crimes committed during the genocide, and many are serving out their
    sentences in jails throughout the country. Suffice it to say, the
    defense's woman-and-mother narrative simply does not work.

    Munyenyezi may very well be a devoted mother to her three daughters.
    The exchange that took place between them in the courtroom belied any
    mental shortcuts that may have been made to paint her as heartless and
    cold. She loves her daughters. But must you be a bad mother in order
    to stand at a roadblock and oversee rape and murder on a genocidal
    scale? Too many instances, from the Holocaust to Srebrenica, prove
    that you can be a loving parent and still be a murderer.

    In the end, Munyenyezi's guilt should be judged according to the
    evidence presented to the court and jury, not based on gendered
    assumptions about female agency during violent upheaval. While a
    decision pertaining to Munyenyezi's guilt has not yet been reached,
    let us at least acknowledge that her gender and motherhood have
    nothing to do with her capacity to commit genocide. She may not have
    done it, but as a woman and a mother, she certainly could have.


    From: Baghdasarian
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