Living through extended liminality: Reintegration experiences of génocidaire ex-prisoners in Rwanda

Abstract

In Rwanda, following the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, meting out justice on suspected génocidaires has resulted in the need to reintegrate an unprecedent number of ex-prisoners, a process that continues even now, three decades later. Doing so in a society that still bears scars of this genocide, but which is also experiencing drastic social transformation, is a complex matter. Qualitative research carried out in the framework of a community-based psychosocial support program, implemented in ten, mostly rural, districts of Rwanda, aimed to study lived experiences of ex-prisoners going through the reintegration process. Twenty-seven focus group discussions and twenty-five interviews were conducted with ex-prisoners and people living close to them. The research was executed between June 2021 and June 2022. Findings revealed factors, both isolated and intersecting, hindering the reintegration process and consequently keeping ex-prisoners in liminality after imprisonment. These factors include advanced age, bodily and mental frailties, family infightings, land scarcity, and social repercussions of being a génocidaire. There are also ex-prisoners who manage to enter the post-liminal phase after being released due to psychosocial support initiatives or people's empowerment-oriented policies, laws, and programs. This article leaves room for further investigations, especially regarding the sustainability of ex-prisoners' reintegration initiatives.

Keywords

genocide ex-prisoners liminality Rwanda

Introduction

Following the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the phenomena of apprehending suspects and facilitating the reintegration of ex-prisoners were propelled to unprecedented socio-political heights because of the staggering number of suspects. Factors that made this Genocide possible included a deep-rooted culture of impunity and the adoption of an ideology of hatred that led to a long-standing dehumanization of the Tutsi. The institutionalization of the culture of political violence against the Tutsi was significantly amplified, when on 1 October 1990, the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA) – the army branch of Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) composed mainly of the descendants of refugees from the first waves of political violence against the Tutsi in 1959, 1960s and 1970s – attacked north-eastern Rwanda from Uganda. RPF demanded the return of Rwandan refugees and the democratization of the country. But, as RPA got the upper hand in the fight, the fear of losing power to the Tutsi pushed the Hutu hardliners to play the ethnicity card in order to rally the masses behind their cause, which many did eventually (Straus, 2006). This massive participation of ordinary men and women in the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda has become one of its many particularities.

Both the previous culture of impunity and the staggering number of suspects were among the determining factors in the choice of the form of justice Rwanda made in response to genocide crimes. Contrary to other countries, which opted for amnesties, truth commissions, selective criminal prosecutions or a combination thereof, Rwanda decided to end the culture of impunity. Thus, a sizable portion of its population suspected of being guilty of genocide crimes was put on trial, implicating ‘mass justice for mass atrocity’ (Waldorf, 2006: 3). About 120,000 people were provisionally detained after the Genocide against the Tutsi and later judged together with many other suspects who had not been apprehended before. Suspects were tried mostly through gacaca courts, a community justice system, which was a modernized adaptation of the traditional community-based conflict-resolution mechanism of gacaca (Burnet, 2008; Clark, 2010; Human Rights Watch, 2011; Ingelaere, 2016; Wielenga and Harris, 2011). Gacaca courts were to blend restorative attributes inherent in their indigeneity (Tiemessen, 2004: 61) with features of a justice form that was meant to set the country on a new course of peace and reconciliation (Drumbl, 2000). Contrary to traditional gacaca, offenders while standing in courts carried the burden of what they had done alone, isolated from families (Wielenga and Harris, 2011: 18). Nonetheless, in most of cases, family members of those convicted were affected by repercussions, including social shame, and the requirement to make reparations.

The gacaca courts were established in 2001 to, among other things, speed up the process of trying genocide suspects (the majority were already imprisoned), establish the truth about the Genocide against the Tutsi and ease the pressure on incarceration facilities whose capacity and living conditions had been concerningly over stretched. The courts completed their mandate on 18 June 2012, after having reviewed 1,958,634 cases and prosecuted 1,003,227 individuals (Hola and Brehm, 2016: 64; National Service of Gacaca Courts, 2012:261). The courts also sentenced 84,896 people to Travaux d’Intérêt Général (TIG; Works of General Interests). TIG was introduced in 2005 as an alternative punishment for inmates who confessed to their involvement in genocide-related crimes and asked for forgiveness.

Releasing imprisoned genocide suspects – provisionally in some cases because of mainly old and young age, ill health or genuine confession – started early 2000s (Clark, 2010). Since then, the number of released prisoners has increased steadily: in November 2014 the number was 107,532 (National Unity and Reconciliation Commission (NURC) 2015:43) while between July 2018 and December 2019 12,408 prisoners were expected to be released (statistics from the Rwanda Correctional Service [RCS] May 2018). For the next five years, RCS (2022a) indicated that 33,487 prisoners, among which 8672 are genocide convicts, would be released. In Rwanda, a convict of genocide crimes de facto became popularly known as a génocidaire, a French term adopted for genocide perpetrators. Génocidaire is a label that is impossible to shake off one's back (Rutayisire and Richters, 2014), even for those who have completed prison sentences.

This article explores how the life of ex-prisoners carrying the arduous social identification of génocidaire unfolds following their release in the local conditions described above. In our analysis of their living through this context, we make use of the theoretical perspective of liminality.

Ex-prisoners’ reintegration from the perspective of liminality

The punishment and reintegration of an ex-prisoner are primarily meant to enable that person to avoid recidivism and eventually become again a fully functional member of society (Durnescu, 2019; Moran, 2012; Sabzi Khoshnami et al., 2022; Santhosh and Mathew, 2021; Shinkfield and Graffam, 2009; Shinkfield et al., 2009). However, punishment produces pain (Haney, 2003: 38), and the sequelae of prison pain linger on even after release, which makes ex-prisoners’ life hard and unpredictable. Consequently, reintegrating in family and community life can be problematic for people around the world who have been imprisoned. Prison, conceived as an ‘acute form of social exclusion’ (Pękala-Wojciechowska et al., 2021), takes people out of normal society and puts them into an often-extended period of extreme liminality (Maruna, 2011: 11).

Liminality is a concept that is commonly referred to in the context of a process of change in social identity, comprising of three phases, with liminality denoting the middle phase. Arnold van Gennep, a French folklorist and ethnographer, identified the three phases as follows: (1) pre-liminal (isolation from the community and loss of old identity), (2) liminal (a transitional phase in which there is no social identity) and (3) post-liminal (re-incorporation into the community with a new social identity) (Gennep, 1960). Using this conceptual template, imprisonment would be understood as the liminal phase, and the reintegration process as the entering of a post-liminal existence. Movement from one phase to the next is typically ritualized. Victor Turner, an anthropologist drawing on Van Gennep's work, focused specifically on the second phase, the liminal one (Ghannam, 2011). For Turner (1969), liminality refers to a situation where old configurations of certainty and identity are no longer present, but no new configuration has yet been reached. People in liminality – ‘liminal personae’ or ‘threshold people’ – have lost their old identities, while what they will become is not yet known. Threshold people are kept outside the normal social structures in a liminal state, where they are typified by, among other things, jeopardy and promise. In liminality, people have ‘no status, property, insignia, secular clothing, rank, kinship position’ (Turner, 1967: 98). Liminality is often symbolically associated with death, invisibility and darkness (Turner, 1969: 95). In many instances, prisoners are like threshold people. During the years in prison, they are not part of any social fabric outside of the prison walls. Imprisonment amounts to what the Kinyarwanda expression ‘gupfa umuntu ahagaze’ (dying while standing) entails. Imprisonment implies different forms of deprivations, ranging from deprivation of liberty, material and heterosexual contacts to deprivation of a sense of security (Pękala-Wojciechowska et al., 2021). Being incarcerated moreover implies going through humiliating ritualistic admission and control procedures, including undressing, strip searching and disinfecting the individual, assigning a newcomer a new institutional uniform, haircut, living quarters, etc. (Maruna, 2011).

Thus, imprisonment is comparable to entering a liminal state. Erikson (1962: 311), for instance, defines the prisoner's humiliation process as ‘a sharp rite of transition at once moving him out of his normal position in society and transferring him into a distinctive deviant role’. What is more problematic, Erikson further observes, is that the deviant label is ‘almost irreversible’ once someone has been ceremoniously identified with it because ritual humiliations continue as ex-prisoners continue to wear ‘invisible stripes’ (LeBel, 2012) well beyond prisons’ walls.

People come out of prison strongly feeling to be a ‘stranger’ and ‘different’ from others. Embodied prison experiences set inmates’ lives on a long, uncertain and potentially perennial process of becoming, stretching beyond prison time (Moran, 2012). Reintegrating ex-prisoners into the social fabric, therefore, is a complex, gradual, multi-dimensional, context-driven and multi-actor process (Santhosh and Mathew, 2021; Shinkfield and Graffam, 2009).

Ex-prisoners face many challenges, as the study on reintegration of génocidaire ex-prisoners in Rwanda presented in this article will demonstrate. Although the bulk of studies on ex-prisoners’ reintegration has been conducted in the West, particularly in the United States of America and Europe (Sabzi Khoshnami et al., 2022), some of commonly identified factors that influence ex-prisoners’ reintegration can find similarities elsewhere, including Rwanda (NURC, 2015). However, when it comes to the problematic nature of génocidaire ex-prisoners’ reintegration, post-genocide Rwanda is a unique and distinct case. There are factors, explored in this article, which are specific to the Rwandan context, and which influence the reintegration of ex-prisoners, particularly génocidaires. This article contends that although the status of génocidaire and embodied prison experiences condemn many ex-prisoners to a possible perennial liminality, there are nevertheless some post-genocide social dynamics and individual-related factors, which are shown as having the potential to enable génocidaire ex-prisoners to move to a post-liminal phase and to rejoin the social fabric.

Methodology

This study was entirely qualitative and focused primarily on exploring subjective and relational lived experiences of génocidaire ex-prisoners in the process of reintegration. The research was conducted in the framework of the psychosocial support intervention community-based sociotherapy. This means that, as part of the participatory action research paradigm, both the researchers themselves and all research participants – both génocidaire ex-prisoners and their relatives or close familiars – had either participated in sociotherapy or were related to those who had done so.

The sociotherapy approach is group-oriented process, conducted and attended by local people, which was introduced in Rwanda in 2005 with the objective of enabling Rwandans to mitigate their mental distress and regain the capacity for relationship which was so cruelly destroyed during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi (Richters et al., 2010). The sociotherapy approach brings together people who share the same social space and history, which in the Rwandan context includes among others, genocide survivors, ex-prisoners and their family members. A sociotherapy group consists of 12–15 community members. Sociotherapy group facilitators (sociotherapists) guide them through a 15-week cycle of exploration of what it means to have lost a sense of safety, trust, care and dignity, and how these can be regained, all in terms of day-to-day lived struggles and experiences. The research team worked closely with sociotherapists, who came from the same communities as group participants, a situation that smoothed the building of rapport between the researchers and research participants.

The empirical data used in this article are primary and were collected in two phases. The first phase was exploratory and was conducted in the form of Focus Group Discussions (FGDs). Twenty-seven FGDs were conducted in 10 (out of 30) districts of Rwanda in which sociotherapy was implemented. Participants in FGDs were chosen for their direct or indirect involvement in the reintegration process of génocidaire ex-prisoners. FGDs took place in the immediate living environments of participants at a time and location that suited their preferences. Participants included génocidaire ex-prisoners,¹ their spouses, genocide survivors and descendants of both genocide survivors and perpetrators. There were nine FGDs with 52 ex-prisoners, eight with 50 spouses of ex-prisoners, seven with 41 genocide survivors, two with 13 descendants of both genocide survivors and perpetrators and one with eight sociotherapists. The total number of participants in FGDs was 164, 58 percent being females and 42 percent males. The mean age of participants was 50.4 years. The educational level was as follows: 64.1 percent of FGD participants had attended primary school and a vocational training level of education, while 28.3 percent of participants never attended any formal schooling. The themes explored in the FGDs included: how family and community members perceived ex-prisoners upon their return from prison; the role of ex-prisoners in their own psychosocial reintegration process; factors hindering or enabling reintegration of ex-prisoners; and the personal lived experiences during the sociotherapy process.

The second phase of data collection aimed at deepening the understanding of some findings that had emerged from FGDs. It consisted of in-depth individual interviews with ex-prisoners and people living closely with them. The focus of these interviews was on life stories, with a particular emphasis on the experience with imprisonment or having a loved one in prison, what was helpful or held ex-prisoners back in the process of reintegrating into family and community life, and the contribution of sociotherapy to ex-prisoners’ reintegration. In total, 25 interviews were conducted: 10 with ex-prisoners (two women and eight men, with the average imprisonment time just over 10 years), nine with spouses of ex-prisoners, four with descendants of ex-prisoners, one with a sibling of an ex-prisoner and another one with a genocide survivor.

All FGDs and individual interviews were conducted in Kinyarwanda, the mother tongue of participants, and audio recorded. Recordings were transcribed while being translated into English. Subsequently, a thematic analysis was performed, which was deductively driven by the main topics that guided both FGDs and individual interviews. Data analysis was done both electronically, using MAXQDA software, and manually.

Participants were fully informed about their rights to refuse or accept participation in this study and that the conversations would be digitally recorded and confidentially kept. No one refused. The non-governmental organization Community Based Sociotherapy Rwanda obtained the approval to conduct our research (No./654/RNEC/2022) from the Rwanda National Ethics Committee. All names used in this article are pseudonyms.

Findings

This section presents lived experiences of the various categories of participants in relation to the reintegration process of ex-prisoners and factors influencing this process. The findings show the fluidity of the transition from a liminal to a post-liminal phase. On the one end, there are ex-prisoners who manage to come out of liminality and enter in a post-liminal phase in their lives, while on the other end, there are those who fail to do so and, as a result, remain in an extended liminality. The first four sub-sections focus mostly on factors complicating re-integration, while the last sub-section highlights situations where ex-prisoners manage to emerge out of liminality.

Old age, bodily and emotional frailties and the problematic of regaining family and social statuses

During the Genocide and at the time of incarceration, most ex-prisoners in our study were still young and at the peak of their physical and mental well-being, while, after years in prison, some came back home at an advanced age, most in their mid- and late ‘60 s or older, physically and mentally weaker. Families of these ex-prisoners are confronted with a problematic situation of reintegrating people they have not gradually seen growing old and weaker, yet still expect them to contribute to family and community life. Some ex-prisoners manifest drastic changes in their physical and mental fitness in comparison to pre-prison time. These changes are manifestly observed firsthand by those living close to them, including spouses, children or sociotherapists. Below a wife of an ex-prisoner describes how she noticed the decline of her husband's physical fitness:

In fact, the arms hurt him [a 66-year-old husband] … he cannot pick up a hoe and go to the field and till the land, and you see the problem … if he were a young man he would persevere and work, but because he is becoming old there is nothing he is able to do, and when he does something, you see that it tires him. (Mary, a 65-year-old wife of an ex-prisoner)

Physical frailties of ex-prisoners are often accompanied by chronic diseases, which amplify their functional incapacitation, and make their come-back into family and community life even harder. Below, an ex-prisoner describes how chronic joint pains affect her life:

After my release, the challenge I faced was not being able to move around due to joint pains in my knees. When I tried to walk it worsened. I was sitting down, feeling ashamed, especially when I was in public. I avoided telling them [people] that my knees were hurting, fearing that they would be thinking that it is a consequence of imprisonment. (Mukagaju, a 71-year-old ex-prisoner)

Some ex-prisoners also show signs of having been mentally affected by imprisonment. People close to them report that ex-prisoners do not seem to have the same mental capacity as before imprisonment. Consequently, families and the rest of the community find ex-prisoners strange, problematic and less helpful to others.

You could realize a change in him. In conversation and in planning for instance. Before [imprisonment] he could plan in a good way. But when he came back, it was like he was not stable. He had a kind of fear and carelessness. This time I was the one doing the planning. If you have lived with someone before, you cannot ignore the change in them. (Martha, a 55-year-old wife of an ex-prisoner)

When we [sociotherapists] go for recruitment of participants for sociotherapy groups, the village leaders tell us, ‘We have found people who are released [from prison] because they have some mental problems’, and we talk to them. Sometimes they tell you things outside of the topic you are discussing. Also, they look like they do not trust themselves, but also not other people. They tend to avoid others, and you realize that they have such problems of not seeming mentally well. (Mathew, a 53-year-old sociotherapist)

Family infightings: Infidelities and land scarcity

Families are for most ex-prisoners the main portal towards rejoining community life. However, it has often happened that male ex-prisoners coming back home find that their spouses have given birth to one or more children. In situations of children born out of wedlock, ex-prisoners feel betrayed and humiliated, and bitter family conflicts often follow. Mathew describes the experience of an ex-prisoner who found his wife pregnant following his release:

Another case is where a man had two wives. When he was released, he found that his younger wife was bearing a child of his own son (from the previous marriage). It was difficult for him to accept that. He was asking his son, ‘what will we call this child?’ That old man had difficulties accepting himself. (Mathew, a 53-year-old sociotherapist)

Paying for reparations weighs on family stability, finances and cohesion. It is often the case that prisoners’ close family members decide to sell a portion of their land to raise enough money to pay for the damage caused by the incarcerated family member. This decision in some cases is taken without informing prisoners or getting their consent, leading to conflicts with them upon release. An ex-prisoner who is in conflict with his immediate family finds life outside prison even harder than life inside prison. Below a sociotherapist describes the situation of an ex-prisoner as shared in a sociotherapy group session:

There is one [ex-prisoner] in our [sociotherapy] group who was in prison for 26 years. When he came back, all family properties were sold. His wife and children had passed away. He was lost in the air. He had nowhere to go. The land had been sold by the family members. He went to search for his relatives and when he found them, they told him that if he brought the issue out, he would be sent back to prison. He was told by the rest of his family that his properties were sold to pay for damage ordered by gacaca. (Catherine, a 53-year-old sociotherapist)

The Rwandan population continues to grow while the land is getting scarcer and increasingly becoming a source of family conflicts. Most ex-prisoners live like ordinary rural peasants, even those who had other careers prior to imprisonment. Therefore, most of ex-prisoners’ livelihood depends on agriculture and animal husbandry. This makes the land for ex-prisoners’ families a valuable asset. One ex-prisoner stated:

After the death of my wife, her [our] son, who is the firstborn, sold the piece of land the mother had left behind. When I arrived here [from prison], that son said that what caused it [selling the land] was that he had nothing else to give to his younger siblings. So, I suffered inside and I gave up on it [land], and it remained like that. (Michel, a 66-year-old ex-prisoner)

Another ex-prisoner describes how selling his land created conflict between him and his mother:

My relationship with the family, I felt that there was no problem, except that I had a problem once I got out of prison. Then I found that my mother had sold the properties my father had given me. (Damian, a 55-year-old ex-prisoner)

Fear and mistrust: An enduring reminder of a heavy past to carry

Ex-prisoners are still, in their own view and that of many other Rwandans, a living symbol of the tragedy of the Genocide against the Tutsi. Being in this situation turns ex-prisoners into frightening and frightened members of society. Ex-prisoners claim that they are particularly afraid of genocide survivors who, understandably, epitomize the Rwandan society's sense of resilience and quest for justice. Most ex-prisoners experience it as uncomfortable to be near genocide survivors, thus making life out of prison socially confined and precarious.

One ex-prisoner explains how living with permanent fear of genocide survivors complicates their social life:

The first challenge faced by an ex-prisoner is fear of genocide survivors. When you have the feeling that someone hates you, it is obvious that you protect yourself and avoid every activity that may involve you and that person because you are always stressed, having difficulties to socialize with others because of carrying the label of a killer. (Kamali, an 80-year-old male ex-prisoner)

Genocide survivors also report fearing ex-prisoners, as one testifies:

But for us as genocide survivors, we have suspicion and fear. However, when they try to approach us by visiting us, you welcome them and discuss with them. Later we can also visit each other but when he comes [back from prison] and isolates himself, you would not have discussions or visits between us. (Mujawimana, a 43-year-old genocide survivor)

Another element is mistrust. Some of the people close to ex-prisoners, namely families, lost trust in them. The infamy of being known as génocidaire brings shame on the whole family and trust gets lost.

Another challenge is that ex-prisoners suffer from is to come back and find their families have lost trust in them. There is what they [children] heard about you. You may have left them at their young age, and they grew up being told that their father did this. When you come back after many years, they have already lost trust in you. (Gakuba, a 59-year-old ex-prisoner)

The loss of trust is mutual, ex-prisoners do not also trust other people, as an ex-prisoner explains:

I am telling the truth, once you are known as an ex-prisoner, people do not trust you, and you [ex-prisoner] also, you do not trust anyone in your community. It takes time as you are studying people, how they are living or how they integrate you in different community works. So, the fear is always in people's hearts, in that of ex-prisoners as well as community members. (Kaberuka, a 54-year-old ex-prisoner)

Impossibility of regaining civil rights

Being found guilty of genocide crimes de facto implies losing certain or all civil rights,² including rights to participate in elections, and working in key public domains such as education, health and security organs. As a result, an ex-prisoner cannot, for instance, hold a public office position, cast a vote, stand in an election or work as a teacher, a nurse or a military officer.

Given the unimaginable and unparalleled cruelty of the Genocide, few people, if any, would argue against the punishments that have been meted out and their subsequent socio-political and legal implications. For ex-prisoners though, the prospects of not being able to regain some civil liberty, particularly casting votes in election, imply that they will indefinitely remain on the fringes of main societal proceedings.

Below an ex-prisoner describes how not being able to participate in elections equals remaining imprisoned.

We are not allowed to participate in elections, so we always feel isolated, we feel uncomfortable, and we are not free. We do not feel well integrated at all. (Ntezimana, a 68-year-old ex-prisoner):

Another ex-prisoner underlines the consequences of not participating in elections as it outweighs other social dimensions in the process of reintegration:

We have been in this community with other people more than a decade, and we have never been accused of any kind of misconduct or crime. We participate with other community members in all social activities, why not in the election of our leaders? (Gakwaya, a 74-year-old ex-prisoner)

It seems, however, that the fear of anyone who has not been in prison, coupled with poor access to public information, means that ex-prisoners sometimes have poor knowledge or do not dare to claim rights and services they are entitled to like any other citizens. These rights include having a national identity card, and even the possibility of requesting the lifting of civic rights loss if the required time and prerequisites have been met (RCS, 2022b: 55).

Moving to a post-liminal phase

Physical and emotional fitness, positive attitudes and willingness to be useful again. Not all people who come back from prison are old, have debilitating ill health or are deeply demotivated to engage in meaningful endeavours. Some ex-prisoners are still physically fit when they are released and are motivated and willing to work again. They may feel that they can still be useful for the family and must work hard to catch up with others who prospered while they were in prison. An ex-prisoner details his plans and visions after imprisonment as follows:

I never thought that one day I would be released. But when I learnt that I was going to be released, I said in my mind, once outside I will behave well, no quarrels with people. My plan was to avoid anything that could bring me back to prison. Another thing was a determination to work for my family, avoid stealing, just work for my family. That was my plan. (Donat, a 65-year-old ex-prisoner)

Contributing to the well-being of the family, as one ex-prisoner remarks, smoothens reintegration:

You try to support them in different activities such as cultivating for them to harmonize the relationships with them, but also it is one way of proving that you have changed. (Moses, a 50-year-old ex-prisoner)

Ex-prisoners in Rwanda are mostly cultivators, reliant on the social significance of the land. Therefore, those who no longer have land feel as if they are kept on the peripheries of the wider society (see above), while those who acquired it after imprisonment, see it as a key step towards reintegration:

When they give you money and you see that it is enough, you can also buy another piece of land, and you continue. That can lift you up. (Michel, a 66-year-old ex-prisoner)

Owning land and the ability to work again are key factors in the reintegration process. However, those factors alone are not enough. Our findings also indicate that a positive attitude of other people towards ex-prisoners contributes to their feeling of being welcomed and accepted. For instance, not all ex-prisoners’ lives are dominated by the fear of others and mutual distrust, because there are some who were well welcomed by their families and the rest of the community, including genocide survivors. There is evidence that those who get a warm welcome from people they find outside use it as a bridge to emerge from social liminality. One ex-prisoner stated:

There is a genocide survivor who is a neighbour of mine. When I was released, he gave me a goat to help me get compost to increase my land productivity. Later my house was damaged by floods. I went to local leaders and got all required documents. With support from all those people, I managed to relocate from a high-risk zone and built another house in the village. The same genocide survivor gave me a cow to keep it for him, so that I can continue to get manure to improve my farm productivity. Unfortunately, the cow got sick and was slaughtered. He [genocide survivor] gave me 20,000 Rwanda francs and promised to continue supporting me. (Gakwaya, a 74-year-old ex-prisoner)

Post-genocide new dynamics: New laws and post-conflict suited socio-economic policies and programmes. Among the many initiated transitional justice mechanisms, such as new laws, policies and government programmes, nothing embodies the post-genocide transformation more than the empowerment of women. Since the late 90s, Rwanda introduced numerous measures aimed at promoting gender equality in the country. These include the 1999 inheritance law, which gives women equal rights, and, in 2003, the new constitution, which guarantees a quota of at least 30 percent of women in decision-making organs. Since the early 2000s, Rwanda has been one of the countries with the highest number of women in parliament (Debusscher and Ansoms, 2013).

Nonetheless, the impression seems to be that gender-sensitive laws and policies have turned out to be a double-edged sword for ex-prisoners. On the one hand, there are those who feel that some women capitalized on these gender-friendly changes to oppress their husbands. This mistreatment is amplified when the oppressed is an ex-prisoner. One ex-prisoner explains:

Many things have changed. Before the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, women used to respect their husbands, but now it has changed. Men are the ones to be submissive to their wives because when you speak loudly or insult your wife, she automatically reports you at the Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB). As we are fearing to be re-imprisoned, we keep quiet even though our wives may misbehave. Some men feel they have to walk on eggs. This is the reason why sometimes ex-prisoners leave their homes to live alone or leave home under the pretext that they are looking for a job. (Mugabo, a 58-year-old male ex-prisoners)

On the other hand, there are also ex-prisoners who find gender equality positive and beneficial for the family:

Gender-based equality started when we were still in prison. I do like this equality because our wives can generate incomes, they are free to work. Even though sometimes some women misuse the gender balance and hurt their husbands, which may be the reason for ex-prisoners not to embrace such changes in our community. (Musabe, a 59-year-old male ex-prisoner)

Another change that epitomized the post-genocide Rwanda socio-cultural transformation and had an impact on ex-prisoners’ perceptions and experiences after imprisonment is the one-cow-per-poor-family (Girinka Munyarwanda) programme, which helps the selected family to produce enough milk, meat and manure to fertilize their land. The family receives a cow for free and when the cow gives birth, the calf is given to a neighbour, who in turn gives the future calf to the next neighbour in line, and so the cycle continues.³ The modus operandi of the programme makes it a socio-economic transformative process. One of the expected by-products of this programme was the promotion of cohesion among Rwandans, something that was badly damaged during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Below an ex-prisoner describes his experience of being given a cow after leaving prison:

Many things changed when we were in prison. For example, when I was released, I had nothing because even my house was destroyed. A few days later, however, I was given a cow and started to take milk together with my children. School buildings are everywhere, and all our children are allowed to study without any discrimination. (Mugabonake, a 63-year-old male ex-prisoner)

The above-described reforms were received by ex-prisoners with mixed feelings. On the one hand, they amplified ex-prisoners’ feelings of being ‘strangers’ in a society that had changed during their imprisonment, while on the other hand, they contributed to the laying of a solid foundation for ex-prisoners’ to rediscover a normal family and social life.

Intersubjective reconnection and healing through psychosocial support. In the past 30 years, there have been many interventions aimed at repairing the Rwandan social fabric that was shredded. Surviving and perpetrating the Genocide generated multiform repercussions, including imprisonment, a ravaged sense of humanity, as well as deep wounds in identity and in capacity for relationships. Therefore, any attempt to restore these lost values requires a solid and safe enough framework that enables people to confront a difficult past together to, to name but a few crucial aspects, plead for and grant forgiveness and fight off fear and mistrust of others. One of these initiatives is community-based sociotherapy (Ingabire et al., 2017). Below, ex-prisoners describe their initial steps in the sociotherapy intervention:

I was afraid but after I saw that other group participants were neighbours, I felt that fear disappeared. At first, it was not clear what they were looking for, but after I realised that they were neighbours, I felt that there was no problem. They requested me to talk, and they accepted that we talk. (Damian, a 55-year-old génocidaire ex-prisoner)

Overcoming one's fear and anxiety marks the beginning of a journey of rediscovering one's lost role and place in a shared social space, and especially regaining a feeling of being a human being among others.

What took my fear away is that I heard people's ideas, and realised the pain they had. I then felt that there was more severe pain than mine, and that there was that pain that was less than mine, and I felt that I can join them in talks. I rediscovered humanity. (Damian, a 55-year-old ex-prisoner)

Discussion

This article examines the lived experiences of ex-prisoners in post-genocide Rwanda. It shows that, in many cases, the rupture between genocide convicts and the outside world, which was symbolized by ritualized prosecution and incarceration, continues on an inner, experiential level after release from prison. We made use of the concept of ‘liminality’ to make sense of this experience. Our study findings indicate some similarities with what has been documented in other socio-political contexts concerning the problematic of life after prison, but also post-genocide specific tendencies in Rwanda.

There are factors that in some cases impact negatively on the reintegration journey of ex-prisoners. These factors include old age, bodily and emotional frailties, family infightings, fear and mistrust and the impossibility of regaining (certain) civil rights. There are also indications that in some other cases ex-prisoners can move out of liminality after their release, because when released they were still in good physical and emotional conditions, had positive attitudes, were able to repair family and social relationships, and profited from other enabling conditions such as government-initiated programmes, policies and laws and various community-owned psychosocial support interventions.

Imprisonment affects inmates physically and emotionally to the extent that by the time they come out of prisons their abilities to fully function again have been considerably impaired. Building on Zaitzow's (2011: 229) claim that ‘what happens inside jails and prisons does not stay inside jails and prisons’, our findings also demonstrate how the embodied prison experience spills over prison walls and determines individual and family functionality and relationality.

While this study has been consistent with other studies in highlighting the corporeality of imprisonment (Moran, 2012; Pękala-Wojciechowska et al., 2021; Shinkfield et al., 2009) and reintegration (Moran, 2012), this article additionally demonstrates how prison embodied experiences in aging bodies severely impairs subjective and intersubjective utilitarian functionality in family and community landscapes.

Avoiding recidivism is viewed in the West as an indication of a successful reintegration made possible by ex-prisoners’ ability to find stable jobs, accessing social support and adopting prosocial behaviours (Shinkfield and Graffam, 2009). The lived experiences described in this article are unique for rural dwellers whose work is mainly about tilling the land, a task that requires physical and mental fitness. However, there are ex-prisoners who display physical weaknesses and mental instability, which are often amplified by an advanced age and chronic diseases that seriously thwart ex-prisoners’ abilities to work again.

The ability to work again is a good indicator of a psychosocial reintegration process going well, because ex-prisoners gain a social status, financial independence and a meaning for their life (Schönherr et al., 2004; Shinkfield and Graffam, 2009). However, as our findings indicate, when ex-prisoners cannot fully join the working force of the family and do not show that they still have the capacity to think strategically for those who depend on them, their social status is as uncertain as that of any other ‘liminal personae’. But for those who come back and still display the physical and mental ability to work, their social status is not much questioned, which contributes to the possibility of moving towards a post-liminal phase.

The employability of ex-prisoners depends on different factors, including education, work history, acquired skills and criminal records (Sabzi Khoshnami et al., 2022). In post-genocide Rwanda, in addition to physical and mental well-being, the prospects of working again after imprisonment depend also on the availability of land. Hence, for an ex-prisoner, to purchase and own a piece of land is a symbol of regained or (maintained) social status and family relevance, which also indicates the ability and desire to move out of liminality.

The family is key in supporting ex-prisoners’ reintegration (Haney, 2003; Shinkfield and Graffam, 2009). It transpires that those who find unhealthy family relationships are likely to eventually relapse into criminality and reimprisonment, while those who land into positive and homely family settings are likely to succeed in reintegration (Haney, 2003; Shinkfield and Graffam, 2009). Our findings particularly indicate that marital infidelities, which in some cases end with children out of wedlock, sour ex-prisoners’ relationships with families. In the Rwandan cultural ecosystem, the pride, respect and social status of a man are irrevocably damaged when his wife's unchastity becomes public knowledge, and a child is born as a result. For an ex-prisoner whose social status had already been destroyed by his genocide crimes, the wife's infidelity amplifies difficulties of having a family life again and moving out of liminality.

People emerge from prison with changed attitudes and disordered emotional connections with the outside world. Miller (2000) observes that ‘offenders emerge from prison afraid to trust others, fearful of the unknown …’ Our findings indicate that the fear and mistrust of ex-prisoners particularly displayed towards genocide survivors and in some cases close family members, reflect the uniqueness of the Rwandan context whereby perpetrators and their families and victims of Genocide are all condemned to share the same living space. This unique post-conflict situation is bound to keep ex-prisoners in a liminal situation given that, even though they are no longer in prison, they do not really feel at home outside prison.

In Rwanda, reintegrating ex-prisoners goes beyond fearing a collision with the laws of the land and recidivism and points to the sharpness of body and mind in enabling subjects in time and space to rediscover lost relevance and functionality in family and community. Some ex-prisoners who have been able to work again after imprisonment and felt relevant to their loved ones have shown indications of moving out of liminality sooner or later. In addition, the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi shredded seriously emotional intersubjective connections between major actors (victims and perpetrators) in that tragedy, thus keeping perpetrators of genocide indeterminately out of shared social spaces, openly or covertly. However, our findings demonstrate that the sociotherapy approach enables outcasted bodies to be visible again and offers non-judgemental ears to all experiences. Going through sociotherapy marks the beginning of a long and arduous process of intersubjective reconnections not only between victims of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and their offenders but also among others including their respective descendants (Ingabire et al., 2022). Further investigation of the potential impact of spin-offs beyond sociotherapy groups in time and space is warranted.

Conclusion

Our study was conducted on the African continent where ex-prisoners’ experiences are scarcely documented. The study has brought to the fore two factors, the unique post-genocide Rwandan context and ordinary peasant ex-prisoners, which make the study different in the light of the bulk of studies on reintegration of ex-offenders elsewhere in the world. In post-genocide Rwanda, a successful reintegration is not uniquely determined by one's adjustment to modern economy, the job market, social support policies and desistance from crimes, but should be understood against the background of a society moving from the horror of Genocide to peaceful cohabitation, reconciliation and resilience.

Footnotes

Notes

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to respondents, CBS Rwanda, local leaders and the team of researchers who contributed to data collection: Nicholas Habarugira, Emmanuel Nzabonimpa, Jeanette Kangabe and Noella Ingabire. The authors also thank Marianne Vysma and the anonymous peer reviewers for their editorial advice.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (EKN) in Rwanda (KIG 25701) and the Mission of the European Union in Rwanda (EIDHR/2020/415–412), which funded respectively the CBS EKN Project Mvura Nkuvure and the Tujyane (Let's go together) project in the context of which this research was conducted.

ORCID iD

Theoneste Rutayisire

Theoneste Rutayisire holds an MA and PhD in Medical Anthropology from the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, and an MTh in African Christianity from the University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. He has published on various topics including transmission of genocide legacies in family environment, parents-children communication about genocide experiences, ex-prisoners' reintegration etc.

Annemiek Richters is emeritus professor in medical anthropology. Her area of research is mental health and psychosocial recovery intersected with peacebuilding across the generations in the aftermath of mass atrocities.

Emmanuel Sarabwe holds a master's degree in human Rights, Gender, and Conflicts in Social Justice Perspective. His area of research is survival of community resistance to genocide, family conflict, and forgiveness in post-genocide Rwanda.

Chantal Marie Ingabire holds a PhD in Public Health. Her area of research is mental health, psychosocial support, reconciliation and peacebuilding.

Angela Jansen holds a MSc in International Development, with a specialization in Holocaust and Genocide studies. Her area of research is international narratives in the context of genocide, community-based sociotherapy, and localization of research.

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