The 2004 film Hotel Rwanda is based on the true story of a group of people trying to survive the Rwandan genocide in 1994 of over 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutu by paramilitary extremists back by the Hutu-led government. The genocide took place in 100 days, and is called “the fastest, most efficient killing spree of the 20th century.” The story opens in the days before the massacre began. Paul Rusesabagina, is the house manager of a 4 star Belgian hotel in Kigali, the capital of this former Belgian colony. He is a Hutu. His wife, Tatiana is a Tutsi. While a militia of Tutsis that had been forced from the country by the Hutus is reportedly on the outskirts of the city, ready to attack. Paul hears from his brother-in-law that the Hutu militia is planning to kill all the Tutsis, but he doesn’t believe it, because, as he says, “The UN is here. They have brokered a peace treaty. The whole world is watching.” He is shocked when the killing does begin, but he immediately focuses on keeping his wife and family safe. Soon, he is sheltering extended family, neighbors, and strangers who have heard that they could find refuge at the hotel. Paul witnessed and experienced unimaginable violence. He was ordered to shoot his family and friends or be killed himself. While going for food, he found the roads blocked by bodies that had been slaughtered by machetes and garden tools. Some were still alive. And in town, he saw Tutsi women and girls in cages being raped and murdered. After that, he begged Tatiana that if the killers ever got inside the hotel, to take their children, go to the roof, and jump off, rather than be murdered by a machete. Soon, French and Belgian soldiers arrived, but only to rescue the white foreign nationals staying at the hotel, not the Rwandans. The small UN peace-keeping force there had orders not to intervene. They even refused to take the Rwandan children who had been rescued from an orphanage, where the other children had been murdered while the Red Cross volunteer was forced to watch. Paul was only able to keep those who were inside the hotel, which quickly grew to over 1200, safe, by bribing a general to put out the word that if the hotel was attacked, the Belgian army would respond. He kept them all safe, but when the Tutsis regained power, they joined the 1.3 million primarily Hutu refugees in Tanzania and Zaire. The producer of the movie said that he made it because there was such little attention given to the genocide by the western world, with many people still being unaware that it happened. At the root of this lack of caring is racism. From the colonizers, whose interest in eugenics led them to separate Hutus and Tutsis by their physical appearance, to the western media’s depiction of the genocide as tribal warfare, as they had no understanding of Rwanda’s Colonial history, to the United States refusing to help when they knew the genocide was happening, which they most certainly would have done if it were in England or France. Paul learned that that rest of the world didn’t care from a journalist and a UN peacekeeper. While he was helping the journalist get out video of the massacre, he was so hopeful that help would come. But the journalist said to him, “I think if people see this footage, they will say, ‘Oh God, that’s horrible!’ and then go on eating their dinners.” The UN colonel said to Paul, “To the West, you are dirt, worse than dirt, because you are black.” I read a study of the lack of coverage of the genocide by the major networks in the U.S. And some of the reasons given were: that it didn’t involve US interests. (During that time they were covering Haiti because Haitian refugees were landing in Florida.) They didn’t like covering events that didn’t focus on US acts of benevolence. And the folks at home couldn’t understand who were the good guys and who were the bad guys, so they lost interest. The primary reason for the lack of coverage was that, when the white people were evacuated from Rwanda, the journalists who were there left. As we hear in the movie, as 8,000 Rwandans were being murdered every day, the US government not only refused to send help, but their officials refused to even use the word genocide, because doing so might obligate them to intervene. There is also a lesson about how inflammatory speech incites mob violence, which we witnessed in our country recently. But the movie and the real life story of Paul and Tatiana Rusesabagina also show us that no matter what unspeakable horror is happening around us, there are still good people who make enormous sacrifices to save their fellow humans. As more and more people flee to the hotel for refuge, we hear Paul say to them, “There is always room.” And he says it again when they arrive at a temporary camp just across the border, and end up taking a large group of orphaned children and the Red Cross volunteer with them to Tanzania, on what seems like a very full bus. For Paul and those who helped him, It didn’t matter if people were black or white, Hutu or Tutsi. They worked together to do as much good for as many people as they could. May we remember that there is always room, In our homes, at our table, in our schedules, in our wallets, and in our hearts for our fellow humans.
No comments:
Post a Comment