TORTURE Journal
Latest issue: Volume 24, Supplementum 1, 2014
http://www.irct.org/torture-journal
Issue Theme: Of death and rebirth: Life histories of Rwandan female genocide survivors
Introduction
Annemiek Richters
Excerpt
It is generally known that during the 100 days of genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994, sexual violence was committed on an unprecedented scale. Many women were first raped and then killed. With a certain degree of probability, the majority of Tutsi women who survived had been raped. Limited information is available regarding the experiences of these women. However, there is enough empirical evidence provided in human rights accounts and research
reports substantiating that these women were exposed to unimaginable horror, which for the majority of them had a range of devastating short and long term effects.1-4 What is hard to find are voices of female survivors who succeeded in taking steps towards healing of at least some of these lingering effects. The stories collected in this Supplementum stand out in this respect. The authors describe the genocide as a period that turned them into living dead persons while they end their stories with the rebirth they experienced through participation in
sociotherapy….