I recently watched Hotel Rwanda and felt compelled (and obviously tragically moved and upset by the story, despite its hollywoodization) to write about the women that were victimized in the rape camps during the Tutsi massacre. As most of us know this particular moment of genocide was not something the world payed a tremendous amount of attention to, until after the fact. So it goes the women victimized during this brutal time, where given that much less attention.
An article in the Chicago Tribune talks about the condition of these women violently and systematically raped during the massacre 11 years later.
The evil efficiency of the Hutu government and its militias is well known. What is not as well known is that tens of thousands of women and girls were raped as part of the horror. Some estimates put the number at 250,000 or more.
Now, 11 years later, many of the women who survived are dying of AIDS. For them, the genocide continues, murder on the installment plan.
The article traces the work of Dr. Mardge Cohen, a doctor from Chicago specializing in treating women with HIV, who has opened a clinic in Rwanda for women suffering from HIV. One of the women she is treating, Francine tells her story...
At age 36, Francine lives on less than a dollar a day, a typical existence for many Rwandans. Abandoned and alone, she is caring for her two young sons and two teenaged orphan girls. That, too, is typical.
It seems everyone in Rwanda, whether they can afford it or not - and most cannot - has taken in children orphaned by genocide or AIDS. As much as 10 percent of the country is infected. Francine's girls were the daughters of neighbors who died in the genocide. Much of Francine's family also perished.
Three months pregnant at the time, she witnessed the murder of her first husband and two of her sons. Her husband was tortured and forced to dig his own grave. Her little boys were dragged off, pleading with their killers to let them die with Mommy.
Mommy wasn't killed, at least not then. She was taken to a warehouse by Hutu militiamen and, along with dozens of other women, repeatedly raped. She watched her captors get drunk on beer and sometimes come to blows over who would rape the prettiest prisoners first.
The men would come in after a day of "work" - their euphemism for acts of genocide. They would leave their weapons at the door and pick out a woman.
"After killing our husbands," Francine said, "they came to reward themselves with us. Rape was the last activity of the day."
Francine believes this is when she was infected with HIV, when her death sentence began. Her second husband, who knew about her ordeal, abandoned her when she tested positive for the virus years later. For three years after she was freed, she hardly said a word.
"Sometimes," she said, "I wish they had killed me."
Sorry for all the text, I didn't want to leave anything out. I think this is something we should know about. Props to those in Rwanda recognizing the problem and trying to help these women, help themselves.
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