STUDY GUIDE QUESTIONS FOR RAPE AND GENOCIDE IN RWANDA

I. An Unprecedented Opportunity

1. Which life experience would best prepare Judge Pillay to respect Akayesu's right to a fair trial?

    1. Law degree from Harvard University
    2. Law practice defending political activists and prisoners*
    3. Board member service with Equality Now
    4. Minority group ancestry in South Africa

2. Why might a feminist judge object to defining rape as an act of genocide?

  1. Wartime rapes committed for soldiers' pleasure might become more difficult to punish*
  2. Rape prosecutions involving pregnancy would undermine efforts to legalize abortion
  3. Existing international laws on torture and crimes against humanity are sufficient to protect women from sexual violence in war
  4. Rape is more like slavery than genocide

II. Prior Responses to Sexual Violence in War

1. Which opposed the treatment of women as spoils of war?

  1. Old Testament scripture
  2. Classical authors of ancient Greece
  3. 14th Century feudal rulers in Europe
  4. 1907 Hague Convention rules on noncombatants*

2. The account of prosecutions at Nuremberg implies that Nazis were not convicted of rape because

  1. German troops were not responsible for mass rape
  2. Rape crimes were beyond the tribunal's jurisdiction
  3. There were no women prosecutors and judges
  4. Judges were from countries responsible for wartime rapes of German and Italian women*

3. Which rape victims were ignored in postwar international criminal prosecution of the Japanese?

  1. Korean women coerced into brothels for Japanese soldiers*
  2. Philippine children raped by Japanese occupation forces
  3. Chinese women abused when Japan seized Nanking

4. Which provision of the 1949 Geneva Conventions specifically prohibits rape?

  1. The 3rd Geneva Convention on prisoners of war
  2. Article 27 of the 4th Geneva Convention on civilians*
  3. Common Article 3 of all four Geneva Conventions

5. After the conflicts in Vietnam and Bangladesh, how did Protocol II of 1977 amend the 1949 Geneva Conventions?

  1. By creating an international tribunal to prosecute war criminals
  2. By applying all the rules of international war to internal armed conflicts
  3. By expanding the coverage of Common Article 3 to include rape*

6. What success did NGOs promoting women's human rights achieve?

  1. Rape prosecutions in Guatemala and El Salvador
  2. Appointment of women as U.N. Chief prosecutor for Yugoslavia and Rwanda*
  3. Guaranteed appointment of female judges to the new International Criminal Court

III. Genocide In Rwanda

1. Which fact might Belgians use to refute criticism of their colonial policies in Rwanda?

  1. Belgium is legally divided into French and Dutch speaking constituencies with schools and government posts formally assigned to distinct language groups.*
  2. Biologists and anthropologists offer conclusive scientific support for the tribal classifications used to identify the Tutsi group for leadership in Rwanda
  3. Delegating power to a minority group in Rwanda enabled Belgian colonists to secure the most loyal African administrators.

2. What factors differentiated Hutu and Tutsi?

  1. Religion
  2. Language
  3. Race
  4. None of the above*

3. After independence in the early 1960s

  1. Tutsis held power in both Rwanda and Burundi
  2. Hutus held power in both Rwanda and Burundi
  3. Burundi had not experienced the mass killing suffered by Rwandans
  4. Tutsis in exile posed a threat to Rwanda's Hutu government*

4. Which laid plans to commit genocide in 1994?

  1. RPF
  2. Interhamwe*
  3. UNAMIR
  4. Twa

5. Why might Hutu forces assassinate President Habyarimana?

  1. He was a Tutsi
  2. He agreed to share power with the RPF*
  3. He was unintentionally killed in the assassination of Burundi's Tutsi President

6. Rwanda army forces were predominantly

  1. Hutu*
  2. Tutsi
  3. Belgian

7. Which individual urged action to prevent the genocide?

  1. Kofi Annan
  2. Romeo Dallaire*
  3. Juvenal Habyarimana
  4. Jean Kambanda

8. A. U.S. journalist accused Akayesu of

  1. Orchestrating mass murder like Himmler in Germany
  2. Wielding primitive weapons in brutal murders
  3. Following orders from above to direct subordinates who killed Tutsi*

9. Akayesu personally

  1. served as an Interhamwe leader
  2. raped Tutsi women as a spoil of war
  3. attacked fellow Hutus who protected Tutsis*
  4. joined the genocide at the earliest opportunity

IV. The U.N. Creates a Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

1. Which evidence would be most critical in determining whether the Security Council had authority under the U.N. Charter to create a criminal tribunal for Rwanda?

  1. Hutus had raped over 250,000 Tutsi women
  2. Over half a million Tutsi were killed
  3. Tutsi refugees threatened to involve neighboring states in the conflict*
  4. Hutu leaders had copied ethnic cleansing from Serbs in Yugoslavia

2. What did Rwanda want for the new U.N. tribunal?

  1. French speaking judges from Belgium, France and Quebec
  2. Prosecution and imprisonment in a neighboring state
  3. The power to sentence Hutu killers to death*
  4. A Tutsi court registrar and Tutsi prosecutor

3. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda had a

  1. trial chamber in Rwanda and an appellate panel in Arusha, Tanzania
  2. prosecutor in Rwanda and trial chambers in Arusha, Tanzania*
  3. trial chamber in Rwanda and an appellate panel at The Hague, Netherlands

4. Rwanda's representative on the Security Council correctly anticipated that the U.N.

  1. would not give sufficient funding for prompt, effective investigation and prosecution*
  2. court would ignore Hutu leaders and convict their subordinates
  3. would be unable to locate detention facilities for those convicted
  4. would convict RPF members of war crimes

V. The Trial of Jean-Paul Akayesu

1. Why was Akayesu not tried until several years after his crimes?

  1. The U.N. did not obtain custody until nearly two years after he fled.
  2. The ICTR was slow to organize and begin operations
  3. A dispute arose over appointed defense counsel
  4. All of the above*

2. Why would Akayesu choose a Belgian lawyer as defense counsel?

  1. Belgian peacekeepers sided with Hutu in the conflict.
  2. He needed expert counsel fluent in French.*
  3. He wanted a lawyer with experience in criminal prosecution.

3. Why did the prosecutors add counts to the indictment during the trial?

  1. They wanted to charge rape as an act of genocide.
  2. They wanted to charge sexual violence as a crime against humanity.*
  3. They had too few original counts to assure a conviction.

4. If Hutu killers massacred political enemies from their own ethnic group

  1. that would be genocide
  2. that would be politicide, not genocide*
  3. that would violate the 1949 Geneva Protocols

5. UNAMIR Commander Dallaire was called by

  1. the prosecutor to testify that Hutus raped Tutsis
  2. the defense to testify that the U.N. failed to stop the genocide*
  3. the defense to testify about RPF war crimes

6. Rwanda's government

  1. allowed Hutus in custody to testify for the defense in Tanzania*
  2. suspended executions in accord with U.N. ICTR procedures
  3. withheld all cooperation with the ICTR

7. By the end of Akayesu's trial. the ICTR had

    1. a significant backlog of cases to process.*
    2. been unable to obtain custody of major Hutu leaders responsible for genocide.
    3. fully resolved early administrative problems.
    4. established good working relations between European judges and African court administrators.

VI. Issues for Judgment

1. In deciding the issue of ethnicity, the ICTR judges determined that

  1. Hutus and Tutsis satsfied the definition for ethnic groups based on distinct physical characteristics.
  2. As a result of legal practice and social custom, Tutsis were a protected group under international law.*
  3. German and Belgian colonial administrators properly classified the Hutu as Bantu and the Tutsi as Nilotic.

2. A Tutsi in the RPF who killed and raped Hutus could only be convicted in the ICTR if

  1. the prosecutor showed intent to extirminate the majority group in whole or in part*
  2. the rapes involved forced impregnation to increase the number of Tutsi
  3. the conflict was judged an international war

3. If upheld on appeal, the Akayesu verdict would

  1. help prosecutors in other cases establish that genocide took place*
  2. set a precedent for convicting other village majors under Common Article 3
  3. set a precedent that laws against conspiracy must not infringe free speech