“He Would Kill Me With His Penis”: Genocidal Rape in Rwanda as a State Crime

Abstract

Only recently have critical criminologists begun a systematic exploration of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity as state crimes (Kramer and Michalowski 2005;Mullins and Rothe 2008;Haveman and Smeulers 2008). This paper contributes to that growing literature through examining the nature and dynamics of sexual violence as it occurred during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. It draws upon empirical examination of events depicted in transcripts of trials held before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. It qualitatively examines the role of leaders in producing mass sexual assaults. It explores how sexual mutilations were more intense expressions of what the genocide's local leaders hoped to accomplish through the use of rape in the event. It also explores long-term results of victimization for survivors. Finally, this paper then uses an integrated theory of state crime (see Mullins and Rothe 2008; Mullins 2006, 2008a) to illuminate the causal forces at play on multiple levels of analysis in producing the sexual violence specifically within the broader genocide.Despite its ubiquity, sexual assaults which occur during military conflicts have received little systematic criminological attention. The use of sexual assault as a weapon in a genocidal event has been examined even less frequently. Recent genocides have displayed a marked use of wide-scale sexual violence as a central technique in the broader attempt to eliminate a category of people. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, this practice is seemingly omnipresent. Both genocidal events in the former Yugoslavia exhibited systematically structured and coordinated sexual assaults (Card 1996;Salzman 1998). In the Darfur region of Sudan, numerous media and human rights organizations have presented calls for action to stop wide-spread rapes throughout the region, especially those being committed by the

Explaining Rape during Civil War: Cross-National Evidence (1980–2009)

“…In contrast, some scholars argue that genocidal wars, rather than ethnic wars, are more likely to feature rape as a "central technique" (Mullins 2009) in genocide. Drawing on MacKinnon (1994), feminist scholars refer to "genocidal rape."…”

Narrating Genocide: Time, Memory, and Blame

“…By the end of July, between 500,000 and 1,200,000 people had been killed, and millions were displaced. An estimated 250,000 people had been raped (United Nations ), and many people had lost their homes, their personal belongings, or been victimized in other ways (Mullins ). The country's institutions, ranging from the judicial system to basic infrastructure like roads, were also in shambles…”

Criminology and war: where are we going and where have we been?

“…Much like the research on legal responses to war crime, however, examination of the criminogenic consequences of war underwent a period of inertia following WWII. Recent decades have witnessed a renewed interest in the link between war and crime, however, and this work has broadened significantly the study of war's consequences for crime and victimization, focusing on themes of state sponsored crime (Kramer & Michalowski, ; Welch, ), war profiteering (Ruggiero, ), and sexual violence (Mullins, ; Wood, ). Scholars are beginning to recognize the parallels between wartime experiences and more “normative” crimes with which the discipline has long been interested.…”