Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal Volume 10 Issue 3 Article 4 12-2016 The 1994 Rwandan Genocide: The Religion/Genocide Nexus, Sexual Violence, and the Future of Genocide Studies Kate E. Temoney Montclair State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp Recommended Citation Temoney, Kate E. (2016) "The 1994 Rwandan Genocide: The Religion/Genocide Nexus, Sexual Violence, and the Future of Genocide Studies," Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal: Vol. 10: Iss. 3: 3-24. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.10.3.1351 Available at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol10/iss3/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Open Access Journals at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The 1994 Rwandan Genocide: The Religion/Genocide Nexus, Sexual Violence, and the Future of Genocide Studies Kate E. Temoney Montclair State University Montclair, New Jersey, USA Abstract: In recent genocides and other conflicts—for example, the Sudan, Burma, and now Iraq—sexual violence and religion have received increasing but modest systematic treatment in genocide studies. This essay contributes to the nascent scholarship on the religious and sexual dimensions of genocide by providing a model for investigating the intersections among religion, genocide, and sexual violence. I treat the Rwandan genocide as a case study using secondary and primary sources and proffer the reinforcing typologies of “othering,” justification, and authorization as an investigatory tool. I further nuance the influences of religion on forms of sexual violation by arguing that religion indirectly (distally) and directly (proximately) furthers the aims of genocide by coding genocidal ideology and violence as “religious.” Ultimately, I contend that studying the religious and sexual aspects of genocide deepens our understanding of the complex dynamics of genocide and opens new lines of inquiry into genocide studies. Keywords: Rwanda, genocide, sexual violence, religion In the 1990s, sexual violence was recognized by international tribunals as a weapon of war.1 In recent genocides and other conflicts—such as those in the Sudan, Burma, and now Iraq—rape as well as the religious aspects of these conflicts have received increasing but modest systematic attention. As a contribution to the nascent scholarship in genocide studies on the religious and sexual dimensions of genocide, I treat the Rwandan genocide as a case study. Although considerable scholarship exists on the role of religion and rape in the Rwanda, most notably, Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda (2009) by Timothy Longman, and Sacrifice as Terror: The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 (2001) by Christopher C. Taylor, my goal is to examine the mutually reinforcing relationships among genocide, religion, and sexual violence. In doing so, Longman’s work is augmented to include not only how Christian beliefs, but also traditional Rwandan beliefs (as well as a syncretism of the two) enabled the genocide. Further, Taylor’s work is extended to include how not only Rwandans indigenous beliefs but Christian beliefs and leadership encouraged rather than discouraged rape. Ultimately, the aim of this article is to build a generalizable schema that assists in clarifying the intersections of genocide, religion, and sexual violence in the interest of genocide prevention as well as prosecution efforts. In 1994, the Hutu Power elite propagandists called for the immediate expulsion of all Tutsi from Rwandan soil, a numerical and civilly oppressed minority. Ideologues convinced and mobilized the Hutu citizenry that they had to defend themselves from Tutsi—an alien threat from Ethiopia—who supposedly assassinated the Rwandan Hutu president, Juvénal Habyarimana, and were in league with the invading Rwandan Patriotic Front (RFP) from the north in Uganda. Using secondary literature and primary data in the form of public speeches and documents, victim accounts, and International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) transcripts, I delineate and illustrate the intersections of genocide, religion, and sexual violence as a model for examining the Rwandan genocide as well as other past and contemporary genocides. First, I propose nexuses of religion and genocide via the typologies of othering, justification, and authorization, and second, I explore the distal (indirect) and proximate (direct) influence of religion on genocidal sexual violence guided by the three aforementioned typologies. Last, I review the implications of the study of the Rwandan genocide, specifically, for future genocide studies as well as general recommendations for genocide research and prevention. 1 In the 1996 ICTY case, Prosecutor v. Tadic, Dusko Tadic was charged with rape and sexual violence as a crime against humanity as well as a war crime. Tadic was not convicted of rape, but he was convicted of aiding and abetting crimes of sexual nature. The landmark decision was official recognition by the United Nations Courts of rape as a war crime. See Marlise Simons, “U.N. Court, for the First Time, Defines Rape as arW Crime,” New York Times, June 28, 1996, accessed August 18, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/28/world/un-court-for-first-time-defines-rape-as-war- crime.html Kate E. Temoney, “The 1994 Rwandan Genocide: The Religion/Genocide Nexus, Sexual Violence, and the Future of Genocide Studies” Genocide Studies and Prevention 10, 3 (2016): 3-24. ©2016 Genocide Studies and Prevention. http://dx.doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.10.3.1351 4 Temoney Religion and Genocide Genocide is not aleatoric nor are its accounts monocausal, and although religious antagonism is rarely the motivation for undertaking genocide, religious worldviews, rhetoric, and rituals are often enlisted in the planning and execution of a genocidal conflict.2 It is typically accepted that “religious violence seldom has its cause in purely religious conflicts; usually it occurs in the context of a clash between secular social interests.”3 The religious nature of genocide resides in the “meaning that actors ascribe to it…[and] the specific expectation[s] on the part of the actor[s] (emphasis added).”4 Moreover, “given the function of religion as a means for understanding what appears to be beyond the reach of understanding, the use of religious reservoirs of meaning and value may seem to make eminent sense.”5 Hence, referring to Max Weber, David Little writes, “human beings seem compelled to evaluate given political and economic arrangements in reference to sacred or cosmic standards.6” Bruce Lincoln specifies these standards when he avers that “certain kinds of religious discourse can assist in [morally justifying]…otherwise problematic acts as righteous deeds, sacred duties, or the like, as when killing is defined as sacrifice, destruction as purification, or war as Crusade.”7 Extending this logic to genocide, “those who commit genocide often endow their actions with some sort of religious meaning, frequently putting forth the assertion that, in destroying entire groups of people, they are doing God’s work.”8 Henry R. Huttenbach succinctly summarizes the intersection and consequence of religion and genocide when he writes, [R]eligion—meaning the faithful, the doctrine, the clergy and their institutions—can easily be prompted to buttress genocidal thought and action in a wide array of capacities. The religion- genocide nexus…in particular, must be carefully monitored in times of social crisis… It is the task of scholars to expose and explore it, and for policy makers to dismantle the religion-genocide connection [emphasis added].9 Responding to Huttenbach’s admonishment entails not only examining religion as a tradition of the faithful who ascribe to particular beliefs and practices and form institutions that propagate them but also as a functional ideology, one that can make the unthinkable act of genocide thinkable by styling extirpation as a moral obligation indispensible to reimagining a community that is divinely ordained and cosmologically necessary. To be sure, in agreement with Scott Appleby’s position, religion has the potential to further peacemaking, but religion has also “so often inspired, legitimated, and exacerbated deadly conflicts,”10 and it is the latter capacity of religion that is our focus. A study 2 “Religion” is not being treated as a reified concept with its own agency, but as a worldview and ideology that is expressed by believers, ecclesial actors, and institutions in the forms of religious rhetoric, appeals to the myths and dogma, and ritual practices. My use of the term “genocide” refers to the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Crime of Genocide: “Genocide means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” 3 Hans G. Kippenberg, Violence as Worship: Religious Wars in the Age of Globalization (Stanford: Stanford University Press 2011), 13. 4 Ibid., 14.