Twenty years after the Rwandan Genocide, one woman explains how she moved past murder, rape and torture

Here at World Without Torture we are now halfway through our 10 story campaign focusing on female victims of sexual violence and torture during the 100 days of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.

The genocide, which remains the largest of modern times, still has effects on the country 20 years later. To understand the effects we are publishing 10 stories from female victims of sexual violence who are recovering from the trauma.

The fifth story focuses on Berthilde Uwimbabazi, who at the age of 34 witnessed the death of her seven brothers, two sisters, her husband and four children – all at the hands of the Interahamwe (a Hutu paramilitary organisation responsible for many of the deaths at the time).

For Berthilde the torture did not end in the psychological effects of witnessing death. Raped, threatened with grenade attacks, and beaten repeatedly, Berthilde found incredible bravery and strength to overcome her experience. However, through a targeted programme of sociotherapy, Berthilde has overcome her past.

You can read an extract of Berthilde’s story “Sharing my problems soothed my headaches and took me out of loneliness” below.  To read her full story, click this link. And to read the stories of the other brave women featured in our campaign, click this link.

Berthilde’s story

My name is Berthilde Uwimbabazi. I come from the Eastern Province, where I was born in 1960, one of 11 children of my farming parents. I married my husband in 1977. We had five children. When the genocide took place, it found us in Bugesera District. My parents, seven brothers and two of my sisters were all killed. Only one of my sisters and I escaped. However, I also lost my husband and four children. One child was killed by a neighbour. Of the children I had with my husband, I remained only with one – the one I carried during the genocide. I also have another daughter as a result of the rape I experienced in 1998 and an adopted child.

Illustration courtesy of Danish artist Yildiz Arslan

I had a good life before the genocide. I was still healthy and my husband was working as a mason; we both had enough money as well as a large plot of agricultural land. My husband and I helped and understood each other. I liked my peers, my children, my neighbours and my friends, but most of them were killed during the genocide.

I now live in a complex of newly built houses for poor and vulnerable people, inhabited by people from all over who do not know my sufferings. I sometimes feel intense sadness because they have called me Interahamwe. They were not in Rwanda during the genocide and have no idea about who I am. When I think about what happened to me during the genocide and about the way my neighbours talk about me, I feel intense sadness and grief so strong it kills me.

None of the previous conflicts in Rwanda were as violent as the 1994 genocide. After the airplane of President Habyarimana crashed, the Interahamwe started killing people that same night. My family and I took refuge atthe Nyamata Catholic parish. After a few days, grenades and bombs were thrown into the church, killing or hurting those inside.

Those who had been outside, including me, all ran away on their own without looking back. I went to hide in a nursery school. The same day we were shot at, MINUAR picked up the white French people who were staying there with us.

Three days later, the school guard chased out those who remained. I then started to hide in a forest during the daytime and slept in ruined houses during the nights. At one point the Interahamwe found me there with seven other women and young girls. From then on they raped us in turn in the evening after their daily work of killing Tutsis. We expected them to kill us too but they did not.

To read Mameritha’s full story, click this link (opens as PDF)

To view the full list of stories, which will be updated every two weeks from April until July, please click this link.

‘I found a family through sociotherapy’: Mameritha’s story of overcoming the Rwandan Genocide

During the 100 days of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, more than 800,000 people were killed for being part of a different ethnic community. It remains the largest genocide of modern times.

Twenty-years later, the effects are still being felt across the country. To understand the effects we are publishing 10 stories from female victims of sexual violence who are recovering from the trauma.

The fourth story focuses on Mameritha Nyiramana and her story of recovery, a long and difficult process as Mameritha not only had to overcome the murder of her siblings during the genocide, but also had to take the responsibility of a pregnancy caused by her rape by members of the Interahamwe (a Hutu paramilitary organisation responsible for many of the deaths at the time).

Speaking in frank, vivid terms, Mameritha explains how she overcame fleeing to the Congo, re-entry to Rwandan to testify in legal proceedings against her attackers, and her journey through sociotherapy which has gradually allowed her to build a happy home.

You can read an extract of Mameritha’s story “I found a family through sociotherapy” below.  To read her full story, click this link. And to read the stories of the other brave women featured in our campaign, click this link.

Mameritha’s story

I was born in the Southern Province of Rwanda. My parents were cattle keepers. We were ten children. We are now four because the other six died during the genocide. Before the genocide, I never experienced any violence. The first time I encountered violence was during the genocide, when I was nineteen years old. I was raped and I gave birth to a child of theInterahamwe. I have good memories of my life before the genocide, especially of meeting up with my friends. It hurts that I no longer see them, because the genocide separated us.

Illustration courtesy of Danish artist Yildiz Arslan

At the beginning of the genocide we were all at home. We saw houses being burned on the other side of our neighbourhood. Suddenly I saw many aggressive men coming towards our home. They had machetes and sticks. I then heard my mother telling us, “Run away because they are coming to kill us.” We fled separately, each searching for a place to hide. I decided to hide in the forest, expecting nobody to find me there. I spent three days alone in the forest. Then the Interahamwe found me and raped me.

Most of them left as soon as they arrived, but four of them stayed. They tore my clothes to pieces and started to rape me one after another while the others watched. After that catastrophic experience I lost consciousness.

When I awoke I was still in the same place. After regaining some strength, I got up and wandered aimlessly in the streets. Seeing me like this, the Interahamwe raped me again several times. A few days after the rape I felt unwell and thought that it was because of hunger and the rape. At the time I knew nothing about pregnancy because the rape was the first time I had sexual intercourse.

Not realising that I could be pregnant, I continued to think that the illness was related to the rape. Once I found out, I felt intensely downhearted. If I had knowledge on how to abort, I would have done that. It was very difficult for me to accept that I was pregnant from the Interahamwe.

To read Mameritha’s full story, click this link (opens as PDF)

To view the full list of stories, which will be updated every two weeks from April until July, please click this link.

Rwanda: 20 years after the genocide, one woman explains how she overcame the horrors of her past

Over the course of 100 days, over 800,000 people were killed for being part of a different ethnic community. To date, the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 remains the largest of modern times.

Twenty-years later, the effects are still being felt across the country, and to understand the effects we are publishing 10 stories from female victims of sexual violence who are still overcoming the effects of this genocide.

In our third story, we hear from 40-year-old Hildegarde Nyampinga who vividly recalls the beginning of the genocide, the murder of her parents, and the horrifying ordeal she endured afterwards as gangs of men raped her.

It took years for Hildegarde to come to terms with what she had experienced but, slowly, she began to move on. And although today Hildegarde still suffers from the rape and torture she suffered – her battle against HIV is notable in particular – therapy has helped her to forgive.

You can read an extract of her story “I died and was resurrected” below. To read her full story, click this link. And to read the stories of the other brave women featured in our campaign, click this link.

Hildegarde’s story

I was born in 1974 in the Southern Province of Rwanda, where I grew up with my ten siblings. I moved after the genocide.

Illustration courtesy of Danish artist Yildiz Arslan

Today, I live in Bugesera District, in the Eastern Province. My parents were killed during the 1994 genocide. Before they died, I had a very good life. The affection I was given by my aunt is the most pleasant thing I can remember from my life before the genocide. Since my aunt was also killed during the genocide, I cannot enjoy getting her affection anymore.

Even though I was sometimes tortured by the secretary of our commune, who used to tell me that once the war started they would violate me with a piece of tree in my vagina, I never thought a genocide would happen. It was in 1992 that I saw Tutsis being killed for the first time. Before the soldiers killed them, they made them dig the holes into which they would be thrown.

Once, on the way to visit my relatives who were refugees at the Catholic Church of Nyamata, I was taken out of the bus and almost raped by soldiers. Another Tutsi passenger was killed in front of my eyes. I went home very scared, but still it did not enter my mind that genocide could happen in my home area.

I experienced the genocide in the South where I grew up. One day, my sister’s domestic worker, who was married to a Hutu, came  and told us that we should not go to sleep because the plane of the president had crashed. That raised ethnic tensions and immediately touched off heaving fighting around the presidential palace and a frenzy of killing of Tutsis. That same night, I observed houses being burnt down. We slept outside of our house. After three days, the killings in our area started.

Perpetrators came to our house asking for me. I was with my parents. With a big abscess on his buttocks, my father could not run. On the fourth day, while I was discussing with my father about whether to carry him on my back in order to search for a place to hide, a crowd of Interahamwe and Burundian refugees caught us at our place. I saw the Interahamwe cutting off my father’s neck with a machete, after they had hit him with a hoe on the head. They threw him into our old latrine. I cannot say what went through my mind while they were cutting him.

Afterwards, they also killed my mother and threw her into the same latrine as my father. Then they decided to rape me.

To read Hildegarde’s full story, click this link (opens as PDF)

To view the full list of stories, which will be updated every two weeks from April until July, please click this link.

Rwanda: 20 years after the genocide

Over the course of 100 days, over 800,000 people were killed for being part of a different ethnic community. Behind the numbers, people lost loved ones, their homes, and their lives to the hands of the military, the police, neighbours, and even friends.

The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 remains the largest of modern times.

Twenty-years later, the effects are still being felt across the country. But perhaps those who suffered the most are women, many of whom were victims of sexual violence and torture.

Every 10 days, over the next 100 days – which marks the period of the genocide – we shall be publishing a story of survival from one of the many female victims of the conflict. Their stories are among some of the most detailed and horrifying, but also among the most hopeful as they describe how they overcame the effects of rape through rehabilitation.

To mark the beginning of the campaign, we have published three stories relating to the genocide. The first comes from Rwandan IRCT member Uyisenga N’Manzi, who are working with orphans from the genocide to help them rebuild their lives.

The other two stories are the first of the collection from female survivors of torture. You can read the introduction to these stories below, or click here for the full list of stories.

Illuminée’s story

Picture courtesy Yildiz Arslan

My name is Illuminée Munyabugingo. The 1994 genocide against Tutsis happened when I was thirty-four years old. I was born in Kigali in a camp for internally displaced persons. My family had moved there from Eastern Province because of the 1959 massacres of Tutsis. We were a family with sixteen children. During the 1959 massacres, the house of my family was not destroyed as it was during the 1994 genocide. People still had kindness when I was younger.

My mother died a few years later when I was fourteen years old. In 1979 I married a man from a prosperous family. I lived with my husband in Bugesera until the genocide started in 1994. We had a good life and together had seven children. The 1994 genocide took my beloved husband, two of my children and thirteen of my siblings.

The genocide was in many ways different from the previous wars of 1959, 1963, 1967 and 1973. In those wars, a person could hide in the house of a neighbour. In 1994 no one was willing to rescue another person. I had never realised before that someone can kill his or her neighbour, slay an innocent child or even kill his own sibling. What I experienced then brought me far in my thoughts, it traumatized me deeply, up to a point that I thought God had forgotten me.

To read Illuminee’s full story, click this link (opens pdf)

Charline’s story

Picture courtesy Yildiz Arslan

I am Charline Musaniwabo. I was born in 1976. My parents were farmers. I lived with them up to April 1994. My life completely changed during the genocide, having been married forcibly and losing many of my family members. I was born into a family of nine children, four boys and five girls. Five siblings and both my parents died during the genocide. Four of us escaped. I did not get a chance to marry a man I loved, because I was taken by force in 1994 by a neighbour who raped and married me. I live with the three children I conceived with this man.

In 1992, genocide took place in Bugesera. In Murama and Kanzenze, people were killed. Hutus burnt Tutsi houses, but in our area nobody was killed. They only ate cows belonging to Tutsi people. Despite all of this, when the 1994 genocide started I still
did not think that as many people would be killed as were indeed killed. The genocide mayhem spread everywhere.

When it began, my whole family left our house in order to look for a place to hide. I took my things and gave them to a friend of mine who was a Hutu girl so that she could keep them for me. After giving her my stuff, my sister-in-law and I went to hide at the home of our Hutu neighbour, who was a Pentecostal Church member. We stayed in his house for two days and on the third day we went to a nearby primary school, thinking that it would be a safer place. We spent two days in the school while the war violence increased. Men who were with us advised us to look for another place to hide because things were getting worse. Since we had nowhere else to go, we took refuge in a nearby swamp where, after four days, a club of Interahamwe found us hiding there.

To read Charline’s full story, click this link (opens pdf)

To view the full list of stories, which will be updated every two weeks from April until July, please click this link.