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Sara E. Brown
Sara E. Brown is the Executive Director of Chhange, the Center for Holocaust, Human Rights & Genocide Education. Brown holds the first Ph.D. in comparative genocide studies from Clark University's Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. She is the author of Gender and the Genocide in Rwanda: Women as Perpetrators and Rescuers, now an Open Access text, and the co-editor of the forthcoming Routledge Handbook on Religion and Genocide.
Latest posts by Sara E. Brown (see all)
- Chhange Goes Virtual During Pandemic - April 29, 2020
- Blaming the Victims 2.0 - June 2, 2013
- ‘But She Was Pregnant!’: The Woman-and-Mother Narrative in Genocide - March 2, 2012
Just look at the abortion genocide in the US. . . Just being a mother doesn’t keep one from committing atrocities.
Sadly.
TG
I’m afraid your remark is off the point. Sadly.
But, the argument that “she was a woman and pregnant” and thus could not have committed genocide is untenable, even though women are known to be the softer and more compassionate gender. A saying goes: “Man is the wolf of man”. Female wolves can be as atrocious as male ones.
you miss the point entirely. the relevance of her pregnancy is the unlikeliness that of all of the witnesses who testified against her (witnesses who had given countless interviews, statements and testimonies for the past 18 years and had NEVER mentioned her presence) – none of them ever mentioned that she was pregnant. and she was 5 months pregnant with twins, so it would be something that would have made her stand out.
“The exchange that took place between them in the courtroom belied any mental shortcuts that may have been made to paint her as heartless and cold.”
This is a very confusing and misleading comment as it suggests that you were in the courtroom and that Munyenyezi testified in her own defense. Whether you were there I don’t know; I do know that she did not testify in this case. You should also know that arguments made during opening and closing statements are not evidence during a trial, a fact you would have absorbed had you actually been at this or any other criminal trial in a US courtroom. Furthermore, the point being made was not that motherhood and pregnancy made her incapable of committing the alleged acts, but rather that she was not available at the times alleged by these so-called “eye-witnesses” because she was at the time caring for an infant child. Please note that the government witnesses notoriously failed to ever, EVER mention or identify her even once during their many prior court appearances. Given your knowledge of Rwanda perhaps you might comment on the testimony by the government’s expert witness that lying is a culturally accepted and morally neutral. Then, you might follow-up your research and ask the prosecutors how many of the witnesses they brought over from Rwanda and didn’t call to take the stand but left sitting in their hotel rooms. Food for thought.