I remember during the Covid-19 Pandemic when shocking accusations of rape were made against certain Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) soldiers who were supposed to be on patrol in Kangondo and Kibiraro villages.
Three victims were identified and seven suspects that included five non-commissioned soldiers and two civilians were tried in court, and three of them were convicted and are currently serving their penalties.
What makes this case unique is that it was in the middle of a lockdown, when everything had stopped, but the next day after this news was aired on a local television, it was investigated. Hundreds of people living in both villages were interviewed at a local school, one by one, until RDF got to the bottom of things.
They could have waited for the lockdown to be lifted, but too much was at stake. When it comes to sexual violence, there is absolutely zero tolerance, at least that was the message I got from this.
Another video of a Rwandan Peacekeeper in South Sudan giving self-defense training to young girls and women has gone viral. It is a fact that women living in conflict or post-conflict areas are much more at risk of gender-based violence. In an ideal world, this would not be necessary, but reality on the ground is that a girl has got to have some skills, especially if they need to.
The Rwandan army has quite a reputation to not condone rape committed by its soldiers or anyone. This is a culture that can be traced since the liberation struggle, more than three decades ago. This is not to say that cases have not been reported, but that they have been handled in a way that is obvious to everyone involved or even just a bystander, that this crime is not tolerated.
The 2020 Rwanda Demographic Health Survey shows that the Army and Police grouped together, are on the bottom of those claimed to have perpetrated rape on respondents, at 2.1 percent among females and 0.0 percent among males. This is of course, a work in progress, because even a single case is daunting.
It has to be noted that when a member of the Rwandan army is convicted of rape, they will serve a heavy sentence and most importantly, they will not be allowed to serve in again. It is one of the crimes heavily punished, even in the penal code. A convict can get up to life sentence, which is the heaviest penalty in Rwanda.
The Uncondemned, a 2015 documentary that talks about the first prosecution of rape as a war crime revealed that right after the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi, rape was not given a priority like other counts of Genocide. When Transitional National Assembly which operated from November 1994 to 1997 passed new legislation for the prosecution of genocide cases and crimes against humanity committed between October 30, 1990 and December 31, 1994, sentences were allocated to different crimes depending on their gravity. Unfortunately, rape was going to be punished as a petty crime.
Devastated, local activists and women in parliament at the time organized a march that would see sexual violence punished in the first category, with the heaviest penalty. Brave Rwandans have also testified at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and rape was punished as a war and genocide crime in multiple cases, setting international precedence.
In a 2017 essay "Why men rape,” Sandra Newman, an American author made point that "even in the midst of the violence of war, men are capable of refraining from sexual assault if they know there will be consequences.”
She added: "The commonsensical conclusion is that rape, like other crimes, can most effectively be prevented by deterrence.”
The deterrence of rape by law and most importantly how it is enforced has been quite a journey, but one that bears results. Rwandan soldiers in the country and on peacekeeping missions are well aware of the consequences of committing this crime, just like looting, other physical violence, and any kind of abuse of power. They are expected to have the highest level of discipline, higher than anyone else living, and any Rwandan who has lived in the country can attest to that.
After a reportage by Le Monde and The New Humanitarian alleging that peacekeepers, including Rwandans, were sexually exploiting women they were supposed to protect, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) itself issued a statement saying the rape accusations mention contingents that were never deployed in the localities where the alleged incidents took place.
When the media- which should be reliable and sensitive in their reporting, intend to publish such allegations, perhaps they should do more work to ensure that what they are writing is actually true.
And this is not even a point of believing the victims and survivors. Normal people do believe them, as they should. However, ignoring important principles and ethics of media is something that cannot be justified, especially when it comes to publishing grave accusations, such as rape. One would wonder if there is no hidden agenda behind this, but the responsible people have already responded.