Campbell- Bones of Genocide

After watching Hotel Rwanda and after reading Murambi, the Book of Bones by Boubacar Boris Diop and “Lessons Learned from the 1994 Rwanda Genocide” by Charles Murigande I was intrigued by the lessons that are evident in both the book and the film and stated in the article.

The movie is about Paul Rusesabagina who tries to save his fellow Rwandans by putting them in his hotel until help arrives. In the movie, the United Nations peacekeeping forces are not able to do anything because they forbidden to interfere in the genocide. I feel the movie gave the best representation of how responsibility was assigned to western powers. Especially since foreign nationals were evacuated while the Rwandans were left behind. The Rwanadans were the targeted prey, but they were left to fend for themselves. An attempt was made to save them, but the United Nations forces gave up as soon as they were ambushed trying to save Paul and his neighbors.

In the book, there are several characters that give their views of the genocide, but there are two who really stand out: Cornelius Uvimana and his uncle Siméon Habineza. Being the only living relatives in their family, Habineza and Uvimana do their best to continue living after the genocide. Cornelius is dealing with his inner demons by trying to write a play about the genocide. He had left home, but came back to finally confront his emotions. His uncle Siméon, on the other hand, did not leave home, but just dealt with everything. He understood that they suffered, but also that they are no better than the people who made them suffer because we are all people with good and evil inside all of us.

The article was strictly about lessons that should have been learned form the Rwandan genocide. Murigande spoke of how the United Nations had ample enough information from a general about Interhamwe having plans that would kill Tutsis in minutes before the genocide. Knowing that the United Nations had this information before the genocide occurred had Murigande think of several lessons that could be learned form this, but I found two that I thought stuck the most. The first lesson to remember is that keeping silent actually encourages killers to perform crimes that could be worse then what they were originally planning on doing. If the United Nations had only acted on this report then the people who were responsible for this genocide would not have gotten away with what they did get away with. The second lesson is that failing to act in a timely manner can be costly not only economically, but also bodily. Many people could have been saved if the United Nations had only done something. This goes back to how Siméon Habineza acts after the genocide and the lesson he tried to get through Cornelius’s head.