Ten years after the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi, Consolee Nishimwe, who was 24 at the time, fell really sick. If she had not gone to the hospital at that moment, she would have died.
Deep down, she had a feeling she was HIV positive and even had the symptoms, but she was in denial. Every time she remembered of how she was raped by her neighbour, the words he was uttering, and the rage in his face, she just wished she would forget.
"I delayed to accept what had happened to me. It takes a while. I would think of what happened and it was always traumatic. But the virus was growing. Even testing positive, which confirmed my fears, was a shock to me. Understanding that I had to take medication everyday was not easy," Nishimwe said.
Nishimwe, who was 14 during the Genocide, was born to two teachers as the first born of five children in Rubengera, Karongi. Her father and brothers; Philbert, who was 9, Pascal, who was 7, and Bon-Fils, who was 16 months, were all killed during the Genocide. She only survived with her mother and her younger sister, Jeannette who was 11.
Nishimwe is only one of hundreds of thousands of girls and women who were raped during the Genocide. Reports indicate that almost every woman and adolescent girl who survived the genocide was raped. An estimated 250,000 to 500,000 women and girls were victims of this atrocity.
ALSO READ: Genocidal rape: How Rwanda set an international precedent
Testimonies from witnesses and survivors, even experts, describe the rapes during the Genocide as systematic and carefully orchestrated. In her report "Shattered Lives", Binaifer Nowrojee, a Kenyan lawyer who testified as an expert witness at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) mentioned the media as one of the channels used to fuel stereotypes against Tutsi women.
"The targeted use of sexual violence against Tutsi women was fueled by both ethnic and gender stereotypes; Tutsi women were targeted on the basis of the genocide propaganda which had portrayed them as calculated seductress-spies bent on dominating and undermining the Hutu.
Tutsi women were also targeted because of the gender stereotype which portrayed them as beautiful and desirable, but inaccessible to Hutu men whom they allegedly looked down upon and were "too good" for," Nowrojee wrote.
Nowrojee cited examples, such as the "Ten commandments of the Hutu", four of which targeted women.
In the 1996 report, Nowrojee also wrote that while the ages of women and girls raped ranged from as young as two years old to over fifty, most rapes were perpetrated against young women between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six.
Survivors reported being forced to kill their own children before or after being raped. They were raped in the open, stripped naked and paraded in the streets, and made to do other inhumane acts that degraded their human dignity.
In some cases, even corpses were raped, and their legs spread apart and left in the street.
"Women were raped or gang-raped repeatedly as they fled from place to place. Others were held prisoner in houses specifically for the purpose of rape for periods ranging from a few days to the duration of the genocide. Pregnant women or women who had just given birth were not spared," Nowrogee wrote.
In fact, senior government officials at the time encouraged and condoned rape. The Minister for Family and Women's Affairs during the Genocide, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, ordered that Tutsi women be raped and killed during the Genocide. She even personally supervised the rapes to make sure it was done.
The former mayor of Taba commune, Jean-Paul Akayesu, also told the Interahamwe militia to never ask him how a Tutsi woman "tastes like" when they committed mass rape at the commune office.
Like Rene Degni-Segui, the Special Rapporteur for Rwanda in 1996 put it, rape was a rule, its absence the exception. In the first ever conviction of rape as a tool for genocide, the ICTR held that sexual violence was an integral part of the process of destruction of the Tutsi ethnic group.
"The rape of Tutsi women was systematic and was perpetrated against all Tutsi women and solely against them", it concluded.
While many genocidal rape victims were also killed, 70 per cent of genocidal rape survivors were infected with HIV, and more than 20,000 children were born as a result. Due to lack of information and medication, many of the rape victims and their infected children died of AIDS.
Also, on top of the trauma, genocidal rape survivors still suffer from disabilities as a result. For Nishimwe, it was hard to grasp the fact that she had to take medication daily for her to live.
"There is a way your wounds are opened afresh every time you take the pill. You go back to the traumatic events, every single time," Nishimwe said.
Justice
The person who killed Nishimwe's brothers got arrested and was tried in Gacaca. The one who raped her was also arrested when she was still a teenager. "He was in hiding, but some people who knew where he was told my mother, who then filed a case. He died in prison," Nishimwe said.
However, the one who killed her father was never found to be brought to justice until today.
Testifying about rape was not easy because of the shame and stigma associated with the atrocity, which was borne by the victim. Even when seeking medical care, the victims would not disclose that they had been raped. It was also traumatic to repeat the details, especially at the public trials.
The Uncondemned, a 2015 documentary that talks about the first prosecution of rape as an international war crime revealed that right after the Genocide, rape was not given a priority like other counts of Genocide.
ALSO READ: Genocidal rape under superior responsibility: The Bagosora trial
Although the Rwandan law provided for the prosecution of rape under its criminal law at the time, there was a gap of female investigators who the rape victims would have been more open to reveal the details to.
There was also little knowledge of the law, because some women didn't know anyone could be prosecuted for rape, because they had never heard of such a trial in their life.
Some even didn't find it worthy to mention genocidal rape because they feared reprisals from perpetrators in case they didn't get convicted or got released.
When Transitional National Assembly which operated from November 1994 to 1997 passed new legislation for the prosecution of genocide cases and crimes against humanity committed between October 30, 1990 and December 31, 1994, sentences were allocated to different crimes depending on their gravity.
Category 1, which carried a mandatory death penalty, included the planners and organisers of the genocide; those who were in a position of authority (in political parties, the army, religious orders or militias) on the national, prefectoral, communal, or sectoral level; those who were killers of great renown because of the zeal or cruelty with which they carried out the killing.
Category 2, which carried life imprisonment, covered perpetrators or accomplices of intentional homicide or serious assaults that resulted in death.
Category 3 covered persons accused of other serious assaults, and Category 4 covered offenses against property.
In The Uncondemned documentary, Godelive Mukasarasi, an activist and founder of Sevota, an organisation created to support widowed women and their children after the genocide, said rape was classified in the same category as theft of chicken or cattle, as an offense against property.
"There were 12 women in parliament. We asked them to come to Taba to meet the group of women who were raped and they came...then the women of Rwanda organised a march from Kigali to Taba. After that we heard on the radio that the men who had raped women would be prosecuted in the first category," Mukasarasi said in the documentary.
For Nishimwe, she was asked to testify against the man who had found where she and her mother were hiding and took her to a bush to rape her. He had been arrested waiting for trial.
"I was still young, so it was not easy. I am so grateful to the young soldier I found there. I thought they were going to ask many things and details of the rape, but he and other people I went with made sure I was only asked the important. They asked me if I was raped and if it was him that raped me. That was it. I thank them for protecting me because I was still traumatised," Nishimwe said.
"I am among the few women and girls who were able to get justice for the rapes committed against them during the Genocide," she added.
Meanwhile, in Arusha, among others, Nyiramasuhuko and her son Arsene Shalom Ntahobali were convicted by the ICTR on multiple genocide counts including rape. They were sentenced to life in prison in 2011, before their terms were reduced to 47 years on appeal.
On April 12, 2024, Beatrice Munyenyezi, Ntahobali's wife, was also handed a life sentence by the Huye Intermediate court after being found guilty of multiple charges, including complicity in rape.
ALSO READ: Beatrice Munyenyezi sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide crimes
Healing
Nishimwe had got justice, but she had not healed. She describes her life in the first decade after the Genocide to have been in a bad place, her future uncertain. However, she commends her doctor for his empathy.
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"My doctor is the one who encouraged me to take on therapy. This was the beginning of healing for me. I was encouraged to journal by my therapist, and it really helped me. I then learnt to accept what had happened to me. I was freed by opening up," Nishimwe said.
She wrote everything that happened to her to be able to love herself. She eventually published her book titled "Tested To The Limit: A Genocide Survivor's Story Of Pain, Resilience And Hope" in 2012.
"I felt relieved of a burden, but I also created a new way of looking at myself. I changed the way I looked at myself as a young woman and all the shame that I had been carrying, because there is stigma of HIV, as well as rape. Slowly, in the journey, I learned to love and take good care of myself," Nishimwe said.
She describes this journey to have not been easy. She started viewing herself as valuable, and worthy to live a good life and happiness.
"This is when I started to view the pill as a vitamin, not a threat. The mind is special, and that is why it is important to take care of your thoughts. From then, many things have changed in how I feel and even the way I look," she added.
Nishimwe also pledged to share with other people going through hard times that it is possible to love themselves, to accept, and to live. She also understands that people's experiences are different, and that some people may require more time to heal.
"I was lucky to have people who listened to me. That is why I keep saying that giving someone time to listen to them is a powerful gift. I wish all of us would listen to someone who is going through a hard time," Nishimwe added.
The person who killed Nishimwe's brothers wrote a letter from prison to her mother, asking for forgiveness. He said that it was Satan who caused him to do it, because he didn't have a problem with their family.
"I ask God for forgiveness and from you that I betrayed too," the last line of the letter, dated 2007 read.
Nishimwe has high hopes for the future. It has been a 30-year journey of pain, but of healing too. Who knew this was possible? Based in NewYork, she is now an author and motivational speaker.
"No matter what horrible circumstances you may face in your life, never lose hope. Losing hope is the beginning of your own self-defeat," Nishimwe said.
