Ex-Rwanda minister jailed for life on genocide

A former Rwandan minister has been jailed for life for genocide and incitement to rape at the United Nations-backed court for Rwanda. Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, who is one of the first women to be charged with genocide, was minister for the family and women''s affairs in the Rwandan government when some 800,000 people, mainly ethnic Tutsis, were killed in 1994. She was accused of direct and public incitement to commit genocide and of being responsible for rape "as part of a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population on political, ethnic and racial grounds," the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda said. The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people in the small East African nation of Rwanda. In 1998, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda made the landmark decisions that war rape in Rwanda was an element of the crime of genocide. The Trial Chamber held that "sexual assault formed an integral part of the process of destroying the Tutsi ethnic group and that the rape was systematic and had been perpetrated against Tutsi women only, manifesting the specific intent required for those acts to constitute genocide."