Otto Penzler - The Best American Crime Writing 2003

Over lunch during a break in court this summer, one of Pauline’s attorneys, Nicole Bergevin, accused the Tribunal of making her client a scapegoat of the vindictive current government in Rwanda and of an international community guilt-ridden over its failure to stop the bloodletting. “I’m sure there were some rapes,” Bergevin said, “but Pauline never ordered any rapes.” Later she added: “She was never known to be anti-Tutsi. I’m not saying that no one wanted the Tutsis to be exterminated. Probably there were, but it was not a plan. It was never the government’s intention. If it was, Pauline was not aware of it.” Bergevin then told me that Pauline didn’t have any knowledge about the rapes taking place in Rwanda during the genocide.

Pauline has only one concern, Bergevin said, and it is for Shalom, who, like his mother, faces life imprisonment. “She feels helpless,” Bergevin said.

My many requests to see Pauline were denied. The tribunal bars prisoners from contact with anyone other than family and friends (and even these visits are limited). I did, though, reach Pauline’s husband, Maurice Ntahobari, who at the time of the genocide was the rector of National University in Butare. He now lives in Antwerp, Belgium; his Rwandan passport has been taken away. Though he admits to being in Butare during the genocide, Ntahobari insists he didn’t see or hear any killing. As for the charges against Pauline, he reminded me that she had been a social worker: “She was committed to promoting equality between men and women,” he said defiantly. “It is not culturally possible for a Rwanda woman to make her son rape other women. It just couldn’t have taken place.” Pauline’s only error, he insisted, was in belonging to the side that lost.

Pauline Nyiramasuhuko was born in 1946 amid lush banana groves and green, misty valleys. Her parents were subsistence farmers in Ndora, a small, neat roadside settlement six miles east of Butare. Her family and friends remember her as more ambitious and disciplined than bright. Her sister, Vineranda Mukandekaze, who is 60, told me that Pauline was “good but not generous. She kept everything to herself.” Juliana Niyirora, an old friend of Pauline’s, said: “From her childhood Pauline had political ambition. She always wanted to achieve high. If she saw someone build a house, she wanted a bigger house. If she saw someone do well, she wanted to do better.”

In high school, Pauline became friends with Agathe Kanziga, the eventual wife of the Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana. It was a crucial connection. After graduating, Pauline left Butare for Kigali to join the Ministry for Social Affairs, which was then establishing a network of centers teaching women how to take care of their families, providing instruction on such basics as cooking and supervising children. When Pauline was only 22, Agathe helped her skip up the bureaucratic ladder to become national inspector of the ministry.

In 1968 Pauline married Maurice Ntahobari, who later became president of the Rwanda National Assembly, then minister of higher education and later rector of National University in Butare. By all accounts, however, Pauline was the dominant force in the family. “Maurice was like the woman; he didn’t say anything,” said Jean-Baptist Sebukangaga, a professor of art at National University who has known Pauline since her childhood. “Pauline directed everything. She got Maurice his job as rector at the university.” A friend and neighbor told me that she once saw Pauline screaming at Maurice for not being more committed to the politics of the MRND, the ruling Hutu extremist party.

At 24, nine months pregnant, Pauline, already the mother of a little girl, traveled to Israel on a government mission and gave birth to a son there. (Hence, Shalom.) She returned to Kigali, where in the years that followed she had two more daughters. But Pauline never gave up her job and eventually enrolled in law school, one of the few women in Rwanda to do so. “She had four children, but she still wanted to go back to school,” her friend Niyirora marveled. Already a local MRND party boss, in 1992 she was appointed minister of family and women’s affairs.

Pauline’s brother-in-law, Matthias Ngiwijize, told me that when Pauline became a government minister, she changed. “She stopped coming to her family’s homes,” he said. “She didn’t talk to anybody. She was only close to herself. She resented the poor part of the family. She even stopped visiting her mother.”

A woman eager to prove herself in a party structure built around men and Rwanda’s patriarchal society, Pauline soon found that the road to political success led her back to her birthplace. Butare had become the government’s biggest headache. Home to National University and a scientific research institute-and with the highest concentration of Tutsis in Rwanda-Butare had the most enlightened citizens in the country. The town had been largely immune to Hutu extremism; the MRND never gained a foothold there. But Pauline tried to change all that through a program of intimidation. She would convoy through town with party thugs, setting up barricades in the streets, paralyzing traffic, and disrupting town life. Pauline’s periodic invasions of the town became known as Ghost Days, days when Butare stood still.

Pauline was soon caught up in the anti-Tutsi ideology of her party. “Before 1994 there was no racism in Butare,” said Leoncie Mukamisha, an old schoolmate of Pauline’s who worked under her at the ministry. “Then Pauline came and organized demonstrations in town. The local papers described her as a frenzied madwoman.” Leoncie said that Pauline’s actions won the favor of the president, who recognized her obedience and anti-Tutsi virulence, and assigned to her a number of extremist Hutu ideologues as advisers.

Other friends I spoke with claimed that Pauline’s anti-Tutsi conversion was a purely careerist move meant only to please the higher-ups. It was an echo of the old argument that many Nazis were “just following orders.” Her sister told me that even in 1994, just before the genocide, Pauline had many Tutsi friends, and that a number of Tutsis worked peacefully under Pauline at the ministry.

Leoncie portrayed her differently. She said Pauline’s racism was ardent; at the ministry, she said, Pauline was “horrified at having to be in daily contact with Tutsis.” And a former Hutu political figure who met Pauline in 1992 says that in private discussions, her antipathy toward Tutsis was chillingly clear. “When one spoke with her, one became aware that the Tutsi were people to be destroyed,” he said.

It may never be possible to answer what motivated Pauline’s actions. She may have genuinely felt rage toward Tutsis; she may have been a simple opportunist, hungering for power. But certainly by 1994, her anti-Tutsi zealousness was public. During the genocide Pauline delivered admonishing speeches over Radio Rwanda. A witness recalled one speech: “We are all members of the militia,” Pauline said. “We must work together to hunt down members of the Rwandan Patriotic Front.”

In his confession to genocide and crimes against humanity, former Hutu Prime Minister Jean Kambanda identifies the members of his inner sanctum, where the blueprint of the genocide was first drawn up. The confession names only five names. Pauline Nyiramasuhuko’s is one of them.

During my visit to Butare this summer, two young women, Mary Mukangoga, 24, and Chantal Kantarama, 28, led me into the center of Butare to the prefecture, where they first met and became friends. “I went to the prefecture because other refugees were there,” Mary said in a near whisper. “I preferred to be killed when we were all together.”

In the first weeks of the genocide, Chantal said, she had been abducted and raped by two Hutu men. She escaped and took refuge at a school near the prefecture. One day, Chantal recalled, she heard Pauline announcing through a microphone: “I have a problem. The cockroaches are now near my house. Tomorrow come and help me. Help me get rid of them.” Chantal fled to the prefecture. The next day, Chantal said, Pauline visited the prefechire with Shalom. Mother and son came with the young men of the Interahamwe and selected girls to rape.