`But She Was Pregnant!’: The Woman-and-Mother Narrative in Genocide
by Sara E. Brown
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
http://www.armenianweekly.com/2012/03/02/woman-and-mother-narrative/