"If you don't do this, you'll die with them" : Women Perpetrators in the Rwandan Genocide

Abstract

In April of 1994, a small African country, Rwanda, would experience a horrific genocide that wiped out nearly one million people in one hundred days. This racial struggle between the Hutu and Tutsi people rooted in the Belgian colonization of Rwanda drew the attention of the entire world as the violence unfolded. When the genocide ended, people reported on the brutality of the events that took place and the inhumanity of the killers. The perpetrators of the genocide were almost always seen as men or young teen boys. However, few people discussed the women that were involved in the genocide, and nearly three thousand of the perpetrators were Rwandan women. Through interviews of the women perpetrators that occurred after the genocide, historians started to piece together more information about the women perpetrators; however, there were many more angles to examine. Did the women participate in the genocide because they had deep connections with their Hutu identities or were they compelled to participate because of others? By sifting through interviews, it became evident that women made references gender roles as motives when discussing the acts of genocide they committed. Ultimately, women perpetrators in the Rwandan genocide controlled their actions and decided to participate in the brutal killings of thousands of Tutsi people.