Hotel Rwanda

I took a break from my week-long exercises of coughing, sneezing and downing Nyquil to join some friends at a screening of Hotel Rwanda.

The subject of the movie is Paul Rusesabagina, a Hutu hoteller who, during one of the bloodiest masacres in African history, managed to save the lives of 1268 Hutu and Tutsi refugees.

The movie brings to mind a myriad of issues ranging from the philosphical (Even when all other differences are eliminated how society still needs an "other" to hate) to the societal (Why are American actors needed to bring such a brilliant and important movie to screen?) to the political (the ineffectiveness of the UN, the desire to turn a blind's eye to atrocities in "third world" countries).

Quick history lesson: Belgian colonists created a line of division in Rwanda in 1926 - lighter, "elegant", thin-noses Rwandans, they dubbed "Tutsi", darker Rwandans were dubbed "Hutu" and each group was given an identy card to solidify their group. While the Belgians occupied Rwanda, they favored the Tutsi going so far as to provide them with better education, but when they left, they left the power to the Hutus. The Hutus in turn took revenge on the Tutsi by way of massacre for the treatment they received during the Beligian occupation. In the 60s, the Hutus began to revolt and thousands of Tutis left Rwanda. By 1963, half the Tutsi population lived outside of Rwanda. By the 70s, the remaining Tutsis in Rwanda were forced out of universities and Tutsi were restricted to 9% of jobs. In October 1990, a Tutsi guerrilla brigade called the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) come in from Uganda and invaded Rwanda. A ceasefire was signed a year later. Between then and 1993, the Rwanda army trained a Hutu-dominated militia force. In 1993, the president of Rwanda and the RFP signed a peace agreement and the U.N. is deployed to help implement it. In April 1994, the president of Rwanda and the president of Burundi are killed in a plane crash orchestrated by Hutu extremist to stop the peace accords. That night the killings begin.

The Hutus targeted all high-profile Tutsis and all moderate Hutus. By the end of the 100-day massacre, a million people were killed by machete.

More devestating than the killings in Rwanda was the global indifference to the atrocities. The most attention given was the horror that European and American (white) tourists were in the region and needed aid. Once their freedom was secured, a blind eye was once again turned to the brown people lying dead in the streets. Most news media refused to even utter the word "genocide". We instead returned to our days of Snoop Dogg's "What's My Name", Boys II Men's "I'll Make Love to You" and Kurt Cobain's death.

In essence, we let those people die, knew about it and pretended it wasn't happening.

As much as I express my moral outrage, though, I don't know what I personally could have done even if I'd been fully aware of the carnage. At 19 years old, I doubt that I was fully equipped to take on an angry Hutu with a machete, but I'd like to think that I would have been part of some organized effort to force our government to help. The reality is that I should not have to be part of an organized effort to force my government to help.

America is sending 350 million dollars to help tsunami victims in southeast Asia. No organized effort had to be made for that.

I'm wondering if America will send money to the victims in Africa.

(Imagine me rolling my eyes.)

Anyway, back to the movie...

Hotel Rwanda is a heart-stopping, gut-wrenching flawless film so moving I unabashedly wept openly at the Grove movie theatre, ruining a face full of MAC makeup next to a middle aged white man next to me doing the same (minus the makeup obviously).