Beatrice Munyenyezi

Beatrice Munyenyezi (born 1970) was a woman involved in the Rwanda Genocide. She fled to the United States where she successfully applied for political asylum citing persecution in her home country. In 2013, a US court found that she had lied about her involvement. She was stripped of her American citizenship and was given a ten-year sentence.

Life

Munyenyezi was born around 1970 in Butare in Rwanda.^[1]

When she married, her husband's mother was Pauline Nyiramasuhuko who was later a minister in the provisional government. The event that triggered the start of the Rwanda genocides was the assassination of the Rwandan president when his plane was shot down on 6 April 1994. Her mother and husband were involved in activities in Munyenyezi's home town. Her husband was a student at the National University of Rwanda in Butare. He was also a leader in the extremist Hutu organisation known as the Interahamwe for the area around the city.

Her husband and others were found guilty of killing refugees, orphans and patients from the local hospital and of taking Tutsi prisoners and arranging for them to executed. In particular he and his mother organised and staffed a roadblock outside their family's hotel where Tutsi were identified, imprisoned and executed.^[2]

In 1997 her husband and his mother were arrested in Nairobi where he had been running a grocery store for three years.^[2]

In 1998 she and her three daughters settled in Manchester, New Hampshire after she was given political asylum based on her testimony that she was being persecuted in her home country.^[1]

Munyenyezi had lied as a defence witness for her husband and mother who had been tried by an international tribunal for their part in the genocide in 2006. They had both been sentenced to life imprisonment despite Munyenyezi's evidence that they were not involved in the genocide. She said that she had not seen any killings at the infamous roadblock near their house. Other witnesses gave contradictory evidence and these were supported by satellite images. The US court decided that Munyenyezi was involved at the roadblock. She had inspected identity cards to decide people's racial background. When she said that someone was Tutsi then she had in effect condemned them to death. People were murdered and raped at that roadblock.^[1]

In 2013 she lost her US citizenship based on her early perjury at her hearing for her political asylum a decade before. Her defence attorney argued that she had not committed a crime in America and she had been pregnant and uninvolved. He argued that the court case was costing millions of dollars.^[3] She was given a ten-year sentence.^[4] She and her attorney appealed against the sentence but the judges said that the evidence did not come "within a country mile " of arguing for a mistrial.^[5]

References