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    Published: 2025-10-30
    No. 13 (2025)

    Passport – Media – Deception: Rescue Attempts During the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda as Reflected in the Autobiography of Yolande Mukagasana

    Anne D. Peiter
    Papers in Literature
    Section: Betwen autobiography, diary, letter and biography
    https://doi.org/10.31648/pl.11876

    Abstract

    Based on the autobiography of Yolande Mukagasana, a survivor of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, this article examines the long-term impact of racist stereotypes that were propagated during the country's colonisation by the Germans and Belgians. The “Hamite myth”, which included the notion that Tutsi people were of a “devious character”, suggested that Tutsi women systematically used their sexual allure to subjugate the Hutu majority. Two pertinent examples from the Rwandan press, which published corresponding caricatures with pornographic content, illustrate the brutality of these racial attributions. Racism had direct consequences for Mukagasana's life. When the genocide began on 6 April 1994, she was suspected of attempting to spy on important men as a prostitute. The article demonstrates how Mukagasana initially sought to take advantage of the false report that she had been found dead. However, when the genocidal forces eventually began to search for her, she experienced extreme spatial confinement and a severe restriction of movement: the death squads had erected roadblocks everywhere to control identities and prevent escapes. The subtle use of racist stereotypes – manipulated subversively to protect herself from the perpetrators – ultimately saved Mukagasana's life, but left her distraught and deeply traumatised. The murder scenes she witnessed while travelling through the capital, Kigali, illustrate the profound challenge of “surviving survival”. At the same time, the analysis of her autobiography provides insight into the adaptation strategies used by persecuted women in their desperate attempts to escape the genocidal apparatus.

    Keywords:

    Genocide against the Tutsi of Rwanda, Autobiographical writing by survivors, Media and racism

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    Citation rules

    Peiter, A. D. (2025). Passport – Media – Deception: Rescue Attempts During the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda as Reflected in the Autobiography of Yolande Mukagasana . Papers in Literature, (13), 97–125. https://doi.org/10.31648/pl.11876

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