Former Rwandan Women’s Affairs Minister Convicted for Genocide and Rape

Trigger warning

The first woman to ever be convicted by the United Nations Tribunal has been so for ordering rape and genocide during the Rwandan conflict that resulted in 800,000 deaths and at least 250,000 women raped, reports Jezebel. Pauline Nyiramasuhuko was also the minister in Rwanda for women and family affairs:

Known throughout the country as simply “Pauline,” in 1994 she presided over a brutal trick in Butare, her hometown: luring Tutsis to a stadium on the promise of Red Cross assistance, then slaughtering them. She appears to have a had a particular obsession with ordering soldiers to rape and mutilate women.

[…]

In this and other atrocities, the profile continues, “Pauline had led the soldiers to see rape as a reward.” One woman who witnessed incomprehensible atrocities heard soldiers tell the women they were raping with machetes and spears, ”We are doing what was ordered by Pauline Nyiramasuhuko.”

A devastating reminder that women are just as capable of brutality and violence — and against other women.