Esther Mujawayo

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Esther Mujawayo at a reading in Düsseldorf

Esther Mujawayo (born September 10, 1958 in Taba-Guitarama , Rwanda ) is a sociologist , trauma therapist and author from Rwanda. She is co-founder of AVEGA (Association des Veuves du Genocide d'Avril), the association of widows of the genocide of April 1994 .

Life

Esther Mujawayo was born in Rwanda in 1958, the youngest of four daughters of a primary school teacher and clergyman. From 1973 to 1977 she trained as a primary school teacher in Kigali and worked as a teacher in a boarding school in Remera, Rwanda, until 1979. From 1979 to 1985 she studied social work and then sociology at the Catholic University of Louvain , Belgium , where she obtained a master's degree. She returned to Rwanda and initially worked for a year as a teacher in Kirinda / Kibuye and from 1990 to 1996 as the deputy country representative for Rwanda, Burundi and Eastern Congo for the development organization Oxfam . She was involved in various Rwandan women's organizations.

In the genocide, in which one million people, Tutsi and opposition Hutu, were murdered from April to June 1994, her husband Innocent and almost 300 members of her immediate family were also murdered. She herself survived with her three young daughters because only men were murdered the night the Hutu discovered her. One of their refuge was the Hôtel des Mille Collines , made famous worldwide by the film Hotel Rwanda .

After the genocide, she and other widows founded the AVEGA organization and became its vice-president. In 1996 she went to the University of East Anglia , Great Britain for a year of therapeutic training . After initially working for Oxfam again after her return, she was able to work full-time at AVEGA as a trauma therapist from 1998 to 1999 with the support of Oxfam. At the same time, she was chairman of the board of FNARG, a national fund to support genocide victims.

Esther Mujawayo with two of her daughters (Vienna 2009)

She married the Protestant pastor Helmut Keiner for the second time and has lived with her three daughters in a small town on the Lower Rhine since 1999. Since 2001 she has been working as a trauma therapist in the Psychosocial Center for Refugees in Düsseldorf with severely traumatized refugees from various African countries, especially women and young people.

She gives lectures and readings at numerous congresses, events and international conferences, including in South Africa, Great Britain, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Austria, Italy and Sweden.

Works

Esther Mujawayo with Barbara Gladysch at a reading in Düsseldorf 2007

Esther Mujawayo has published two books: One More Life and In Search of Stéphanie . The Algerian-French journalist Souâd Belhaddad Mujawayos wrote reports for both books . The style of oral narration with its directness and authenticity has been retained in the books. Both books first appeared in France. In Germany they were published by Peter Hammer Verlag Wuppertal , which specializes in literature from Latin America and Africa, among other things. One Life More was also published in paperback in 2007, with a misleading subtitle chosen by Ullstein Verlag without the author's consent (“How I escaped the hell of Rwanda”). Jutta Himmelreich has translated both books into German, and her translation is acknowledged in some reviews.

SurVivantes - One more life

In her first book One Life More , Mujawayo reports on her childhood and youth, her family and everyday life as a member of the Tutsi in Rwanda, and shows the history of earlier discrimination, expulsions and pogroms (1959 and 1973). It becomes clear that the 1994 genocide was not the irrational act of an insane mob, but that it was well prepared and controlled by politically influential circles. She describes how she experienced and survived the genocide, who helped those threatened and who refused to help. She also accuses the UN , France , Belgium and the USA of not intervening .

She tells the stories of many who were cruelly murdered and the stories of others who survived and whose experiences no one later wanted to hear because they were too terrible. She reports on what it is like to go on living after a genocide - from developing “to be condemned to life” to deciding to “living life” and to oppose the perpetrators.

She also accuses the survivors of dealing with the survivors, for example the fact that, until the book was published, the imprisoned perpetrators were treated with AIDS drugs, but the women who raped them and infected them with HIV had no access to treatment. She describes how the organization AVEGA, which was founded as a self-help organization by surviving widows, began to raise political demands for compensation and care for the survivors and to set up aid structures.

In the French edition, Mujawayo's report is supplemented by a conversation between the author and Simone Veil , which is missing in the first German edition. This conversation has been included in the paperback edition.

La fleur de Stéphanie - In search of Stéphanie

In In Search of Stéphanie , Esther Mujawayo tells how, twelve years after the genocide, she went in search of the remains of her sister and her children, who had been thrown into a sewage pit by their murderers. The perpetrators and spectators of the murder are almost all silent about what happened, so that during this trip Mujawayo does not manage to bury her sister in dignity.

It reproduces numerous conversations with other survivors who, in very different ways, face the challenge of continuing to live with the perpetrators in close proximity. In her descriptions of the proceedings at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the Gacaca Courts, Mujawayo takes up central questions of justice, reparation and reconciliation and problematizes the demand for reconciliation if it is not first stated what happened and what justice will be done to the victims and survivors .

The French original title La fleur de Stéphanie (English: The flower of Stephanie ) refers to a flowering bush that her sister had planted at her parents' house. During the reconstruction of the house that was destroyed in the genocide, this shrub was found and it continues to grow.

This book is also supplemented by a conversation between Esther Mujawayo and Simone Veil.

Bibliographical information

Books

  • Esther Mujawayo, Souâd Belhaddad: SurVivantes - Rwanda, dix ans après le génocide. 2004. ISBN 2-87678-955-8
    • German edition: Esther Mujawayo, Souâd Belhaddad: One more life - ten years after the genocide in Rwanda. Wuppertal 2005. ISBN 3-7795-0029-9
  • Esther Mujawayo, Souâd Belhaddad: La fleur du Stéphanie - Rwanda entre réconcialition et déni. 2006 ISBN 2-08-068977-0 and ISBN 978-3-548-36880-1
    • German edition: Esther Mujawayo, Souâd Belhaddad: In search of Stéphanie - Rwanda between reconciliation and denial. Wuppertal 2007. ISBN 3-7795-0082-5

Essays

  • Culture-specific understanding of disease and health in Rwanda. In : Beat the drum and don't be afraid ... - 15 years PSZ 1987–2002 Ed .: Psychosocial Center for Refugees Düsseldorf. Düsseldorf 2003, p. 50
  • Culture and country-specific ways of dealing with women-specific experiences of violence: Rwanda. In: I walk with my shadow - women and violence in different cultures Conference documentation Ed .: Diakonisches Werk der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland eV, Stuttgart 2004. P. 6
  • Esther Mujawayo, Souâd Belhaddad: One more life - ten years after the genocide in Rwanda. in: Weltengarten 2005: German-African Yearbook for Intercultural Thinking. 2005 ISBN 3-934818-49-8

Services

AVEGA

Esther Mujawayo is co-founder of AVEGA ( Association des veuves du génocide d'Avril , in German: Association of the widows of the genocide of April 1994). In January 1995, six months after the genocide, 50 surviving widows got together not only to help each other, but also to give the survivors a voice, to raise political demands and to organize support for other survivors. In Kinyarwanda , the Rwandan language, AVEGA is called Agahozo , a word that comforts, or a word from a poem that you sing to make a child stop crying. The organization offers counseling and medical and psychotherapeutic care for around 35,000 widows and other survivors of the genocide, maintains employment projects and small loan programs , supports survivors in legal proceedings and campaigns for them in political and lobbying work.

Campaign "A cow for every widow"

In her first book, Mujawayo dreams of giving a cow to every widow in Rwanda. “If you bring home a cow, you are someone again! In Europe, your reputation is measured by your bank account; in Rwanda, it counts how many cows you have. Cows are your investment and your reserves. And a symbol that you take responsibility. A widow who brings a cow into her yard shows her neighbors: 'I live, I am very much alive because a cow lives with me!' ”With the help of the A cow for every widow campaign , several hundred cows that live in Rwanda can be bought for around € 100, given away to surviving widows. Esther Mujawayo was nominated for the 2005 campaign for the taz panther.

Lectures and readings

Esther Mujawayo gives lectures and readings in many countries. For example, in 2004 she was invited to the Stockholm International Forum on Preventing Genocide, Threats and Responsibilities as a speaker, to the opening event of the Trust Fund for Victims at the International Criminal Court in The Hague in 2004 and to the Global Conference on the Prevention of Genocide in Montreal in 2007.

Esther Mujawayo with the World Social Award (Vienna 2009)

Awards

literature

  • Esther's Q - how a cow can change a whole life.
  • Dima Zito: One more life - book review.

Both in: Survived time. Time of survival. From the work of the PSZ Düsseldorf 2004. Ed .: Psychosocial Center for Refugees Düsseldorf. Düsseldorf 2005

See also

Web links

Commons : Esther Mujawayo  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chantal Louis: 20 years of Rwanda: And the women? EMMA , April 7, 2014, accessed April 20, 2014 .
  2. ↑ See One more life , p. 322 ff
  3. ↑ Isabelle Vidos: You called us cockroaches . In: Kölnische Rundschau . March 19, 2012 ( online [accessed April 20, 2014]).
  4. ↑ Dirke Köpp: Escape from death . In: Rheinische Post . June 25, 2004: “Shortly after the killings began, Esther Mujawayo's family hid in the school where Esther's husband taught Innocent. [...] A few days later, Hutu militias appeared. "Women and children had to stand on one side, men on the other," recalls Esther Mujawayo. A 12-year-old boy stayed with the group of women. "The militias hissed at him, saying he should go to the men - at 12 he was already an enemy. " The men were taken away and shot. "
  5. ↑ Esther Mujawayo on the PSZ Düsseldorf website, with three videos
  6. ↑ Information from the AVEGA Rwanda website
  7. ↑ Mujawayo: One more life
  8. ^ Taz July 9, 2005: Active against the consequences of the genocide
  9. ↑ Website of the Federal President ( Memento of the original from March 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bundespraesident.de
  10. ↑ See www.womensworldawards.com ( Memento of the original from April 18, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.womensworldawards.com
personal data
SURNAME Mujawayo, Esther
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mujawayo-none, Esther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Rwandan sociologist, trauma therapist and author
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1958
PLACE OF BIRTH Taba-Guitarama , Rwanda