January 9, 2002
Citing a study carried out by her Rwandan group that represents "widows of the genocide," Sylvie Barakagwira said Monday in Kigali that two-thirds of the many thousands of women raped during the genocidal violence in Rwanda in 1994 are infected with HIV. Extremists from the Hutu ethnic group were mainly responsible for killing between 500,000 to 800,000 members of the Tutsi and moderate Hutu groups. Barakagwira said that 80 percent of the surviving women raped during the mass killings were "traumatized by the sexual violence they suffered, and by the massacres of their families."