Fuhrer: Rwanadan Genocide

This week we cover the Tutsi Rwandan Genocide. It is important to note that even before the Genocide in Rwanda tensions had already been strained between the two native tribal groups of the land. In fact one could trace the conflict to even before the country gained independence (1962) all the way to European colonial rule when Belgium (and many other European countries) scrambled to colonize the valuable land and resources of Africa.

At the time of their occupation The Belgians favored the Tutsis and gave them an advantage over the Hutus socially and economically this sparked the animosity between the two groups which reached its breaking point on April 6 th 1994 when President Juvenal Habyarimani is assassinated. His death is blamed on the RPF (Rwanda Patriotic Front) and its mostly Tutsi members although Hutu extremists who wanted to use President Habyarimanis death as an excuse to take power could have just as easily carried out the assassination.

 In any case what comes next is a horrifying attack on Tutsi citizens that lasted a hundred days carried out for the most part by the Interahamwe a militia made up of young men not connected to the army but never the less instructed by the new Hutu government to carry out the attacks. In those hundred days nearly a million Rwandan’s are killed (the death toll is said to be 800,000 but other reports insist it is more.) and as the quote from Murambi rightly indicates “the rest of the world was watching Soccer in America…”commenting how unlike in the cases of the more well known genocides carried out in Europe, foreign assistance (and by foreign I mean Europe) closed itself off to Africa even though the conflict itself could be traced back to them.

The novel Murambi, Book of Bones is a story written by Senegalese Journalist Boubacar Boris Diop who along with 9 other prominent African writers travelled around in post genocide Rwanda to see what they as artists could do to make sure that the stories of those who suffered through are told.  The story itself centers itself around an ethnically mixed Rwandan named Cornelius Uvimana a History teacher who after nearly a long period of exile from his home in Djibouti finally is allowed to come back in 1994, four years after the Genocide. The novel itself is made up of four parts.

The first and third parts contain snippets of narratives that follow people who each had their own part to play in the Genocide this it seems to highlight that no ones hands were entirely clean of what had happened and demonstrates a human beings capacity to do good and commit evil. This idea most notably seen in Part three where Cornelius's father a well respected doctor of Hutu descent, betrays the trust of not only the Tutsi people he promises to save but also his wife and two children (His wife being of Tutsi descent) when he offers them sanctuary at a Polytechnic college (located in Murambi) but then allows the militia to surround it and kill everyone inside. This despicable act from someone who obviously must have been a good person at one point shows the very cold blooded nature that war insights in people and the fact that Joseph is not only willing but wanting to get rid of his Tutsi wife and his own children shows just how strong the hatred between the two groups really were.

Hotel Rwanda on the other hand tells the tale of Hutu hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina who like Joseph (Paul’s wife is also Tutsi) is given the chance to help hundreds of his Tutsi neighbors by allowing them refuge in the hotel he works in. The neighbors are then joined by hundreds more refugees who are sent to the hotel from over populated Red cross and United Nations refugee camps. His struggle to care for them, to negotiate their safe keeping and that of his family is contrasted by the UN peace keepers to assert themselves in to conflict as they are obliged to not intervene in Genocide. Instead they began to evacuate all expats living in Rwanda. This reluctance to help I believe is shown to its most dramatic effect when a journalist Jack Daglish who is just about to leave the hotel is asked by a Tutsi woman who he had a one night stand with to take her with him. He apologizes and tells the crying woman that he cannot then as he leaves he tells his friend “I feel so ashamed.” The comment itself seemingly directed at both the journalist’s and the foreign powers that didn’t find it necessary to intervene.

Otto - The '94 World Cup

Hotel Rwanda(2001) directed by Terry George and Murambi, the Book of Bones by Boubacar Boris Diop both depict life during the Rwandan genocide between the Tutsis and Hutus. Each work puts emphasis on the Western World powers and how no one did anything to stop the atrocities that were taking place within Rwanda. Thousands of innocents were murdered yet people mostly ignored the pleas of help from the victims.

In Hotel Rwanda, the protagonist discuss the world’s reaction to footage of what is happening between the Tutsis and Hutus with a journalist:

Paul Rusesabgaina(Don Cheadle): “I am glad that you have shot this footage and that the world will see it. It is the only way we have a chance that people might intervene.”

Jack(): “Yeah and if no one intervenes, is it still a good thing to show?”

Paul Rusesabgaina: “How can they not intervene when they witness such atrocities?”

Jack: “I think if people see this footage they’ll say, “Oh my God that’s horrible,” and then go on eating their dinners.”

Only the “traitor” Hutus are helping their Tutsi neighbors stay alive, because not even the United Nations will intervene. In a time of war, Colonel Oliver(Nick Nolte) tells Paul “We’re here as peace keepers, not peace makers,” solidifying the idea that Rwanda has been left alone by the rest of the world to sort through their own problems and attempt to stay alive.

The character Cornelius, a history teacher who fled into exile as a teen in Murambi, Book of Bones goes through a transformation when he returns to his homeland where he feels regret and shame that he did nothing to help. While his friends helped and tried to create alert the world, he “had been leading a peaceful existence as a history teacher in Djibouti” (45). Cornelius spends his first few weeks in Rwanda truly learning what had occurred there, and although he started off wanting to compose a play, he decides not to after hearing firsthand what people went through to save themselves. When speaking with Gerard, a man who had escaped death by none other that Cornelius’ father, Gerard explains what he went to to save him self: “I decided that in order to save my skin I would stick with a group, come what may. Even when the soldiers started to shoot bursts in every direction, mu mind stayed very clear. I allowed myself to be covered by the bodies of the first victims. But I was still half visible. So I prayed really hard for others to fall next to me and that’s what happened. I had blood on my clothes, in my eyes, everywhere” (174). This puts emphasis on the tactics that innocent people had to go through, and what would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Gerard would say in conversation “My blood is full of blood,” meaning he was forced to swallow the blood of the victims under whom he was hiding. Cornelius is awakened through the stories of his friends, father, and the sight of the victims who still lay decomposing on Rwandan clay soil. Gerard finishes his story “I’m not making it up, for once that’s not necessary. If you prefer to think that I imagined these horrors your mind will be at peace and that’s not god. This is pain will get lost in opaque words and everything will be forgotten until the next massacre. They really did all these incredible things. It happened in Rwanda only four years ago, when the entire world was playing soccer in America” (176).

Hotel Rwanda and Murambi, Book of Bones takes a look into how the world simply turned their backs on a society of people, allowing some to be murdered mercilessly, while others rampaged the towns acting like maniacs as they were driven through hatred to kill any one of “them.” Each work puts, at least, a slight view of how the western world responded to the media, as well as pleas of the citizens of Rwanda, yet did nothing. Instead they focused on the World Cup Soccer Tournament, a happier event than genocide.

Allen-1994 Genocide In Rwanda

In examining the film Hotel Rwanda together with Murambi, Book of Bones, one receives the unsung portrait of genocide that has occurred in the last twenty years in the African nation of Rwanda. The genocide was sparked from a race war between the Hutu people and the Tutsi people, which have excercised prejudices against one another since the early sixties, but recieved no international intervention in their conflict until the Rwandan massacre reached body counts that were unable to be ignored. The lack of intervention on the part of Western powers is held mainly responsible for why the Rwandan peoples were subjected to such brutal injustice. It was a political struggle on the part of the Western powers to decide whether or not to send military aid. The eventual decision was indifference towards the plight of the Rwandans, and so the 1994 massacre of the Tutsis proceeded unchecked.

As depicted in Hotel Rwanda, Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) was a businessman in charge of regulating the affairs of the Milles Collines Hotel which he managed. As the situation became hostile in Kagali, Paul was forced to make several difficult decisions that hung his fellow citizen's lives in the balance. The reason for Paul's success in securing the survival of so many within the confines of the Milles Collines was his identity as a member of the Hutu race. His identity as Hutu works with and against him as the film progresses. At first this identity allows him to bargin with several prominent Hutu men of power, such as General Bizimungu and the factory owner George Rutuganda. But as the genocide begins, he is pressed with the difficult reality of being marked a traitor among his kinsman for protecting his Tutsi wife and mixed-race children. Through Paul's struggle, we receive the true horror of the Rwanda genocide as an event that segregated a people who were practically relatives into victims and victimizers. By the post-genocide period, both Tutsi and Hutu survivors were ashamed and depricated by the self-inflicted atrocities commited to their shared nation.

Cornelius Uvimana is a character faced with the difficult position of being an escapee of the conflict in Rwanda. The reader receives the notion that Corneilus must deal with a sort of 'survivors guilt' in returning to Rwanda four years after the events of the genocide. Corneilius's reasons for fleeing his birth nation were most significantly made out of instinctual fear for his own life. As a child growing up among the first acts of genocide perpetrated in the 60's, 70's, and 80's, Corneilius developed an inborn repulsion towards his violent country. As he interacts with his childhood companions Jessica and Stanely, who were both active during the 1994 genocide, he receives a sense of isolation from his comrade's exploits. Like Paul Rusesabagina, Cornelius is of Hutu ethnicity, and by the end of his story we discover that all of his relatives were murdered by his father, who was an extremist for the Hutu power movement. Again the difficulty of accepting an ethnic identity attributed to mass murderers arrives in the mind of Cornelius, who faces his guilt as being "the son of a monster."

Asmussen-Rwanda Genocide

In the movie Hotel Rwanda, Paul, along with all the other Tutsis, puts all of his faith in Western powers. He believes that they will have to come and save them at some point because having them stand by and let this genocide happen is not an option. At one point when a reporter comes to apologize to him for the massacre footage he had filmed. Paul says that he thinks it is important for the world to see this because it will make them intervene quicker. However, later in the movie we see that the West doesn’t really know what is going on at all. On the radio we hear a man saying that there are some acts of genocide going on in Rwanda but it seems that they don’t think the situation is that bad. One of the leaders of the UN shows Paul that the world has no interest in getting involved. He says that no one is coming to help and that their only interest is saving the white people.

In the book Murmbi, The Book of Bones, is also similar to the movie in this way because the characters believe that once the media shows the world what is happening, they will have to intervene. Michel assures his family that the war will soon be over because the west will intervene. He states, however, that he knows it is a lie. He knows that no one will care about what is going on even though they will see the massacres on the news. It is easy to write it off saying that it is happening in a far away place and there is nothing you can do about it.

I thought that one of the most interesting stories was about Faustin Gasana. I think that when the story of the genocide in Rwanda is told, it is rarely described from the sides of the Hutu. The reader is given the impression that Faustin is a reasonable man. He relies on history to say that the Hutu and Tutsis could never live together. It is outrageous to see that his father believes they should be more like Hitler was and only make sure they don’t make the same mistakes that he does by letting people escape. Faustin doesn’t seem to be very emotional about the events that he knows will occur in the next days. He speaks of how excited his men are to kill and he very casually mentions how he will let them sharpen their machetes.

Weed - New Extreme

The articles help give perspective and an image of everything going on. Wilkens even says that it was difficult for him to understand what was going on until he was basically out of his norm. It is interesting to think of how we are desensitized. Every day we hear on the news of people dying or being killed. Soldiers doing X and Y standing by and allowing it. It took for him, a shop teacher, to see it first hand in order to take it all in. It makes you think of how desensitized we truly are.
Hotel Rwanda is a very interesting film because it meets a lot of the topics that were discussed earlier in this semester. We see the hero, we see where the world’s priorities lie, and we see people who do nothing. Sadly and most importantly we see Genocide.
For some reason this film always is hard to watch and hard to imagine. It kind of shows the timeline, and development of the mass attacks. We see the planning in the background while people mostly act as if they do not know what is going on. We see the smuggling of machetes into a small camp. For some reason or another it appears that shooting someone is more humane than being attacked by a machete. It was difficult to see the weapons before the actions even began. We the idea of actually become desensitized to all the actions we have read and viewed. This one blows the rest out of the water. The military power there just sits back while everything is going on. Thousands upon thousands of people evacuating from their homes for safety, was extremely difficult.
When we see the military upon arrival or the United Nations, they first off do absolutely nothing. They stand back while people are suffering, and only pull out the wealthy. The UN showed how they valued people. There are thousands of people dying and they rush in to save certain individuals, while they pass up others. The problem is that it was difficult for me to understand how the UN could do nothing. I understand politics and so forth, but there seems to be know extreme consequence if the UN intervenes. Basically wealth is a major priority. It was seen in the previous film as the reporters kind of lived in luxury, but we do see the hero.
The hero on the other hand was Paul Rusesabagina, he was able to through his connections to do everything in his power to save the people around him. He was the iconic hero that stood up. His family was his main priority, but soon developed into something more than that. He begins to contact military leaders, and the people he has made connections with over the years to help him out. He was very similar in a sense to Schindler. He knew he wouldn’t have what he had today if it wasn’t for the people who surround him.

Miller-Genocide in Rwanda

Murambi: The Book of Bones is written in four parts. Diop’s novel traces the eturn of a Rwandan history teacher, Cornelius Uvimana, to his home country; this is after the Rwandan genocide in 1994. At the time of the genocide, Cornelius had been living and working in Djibouti, a place where many Rwandans aimed to seek safe haven. Unfortunately, Cornelius’s leave of absence from Rwanda has left him in the dark about the aftermath of the genocide. This leads him to the tragic discovery that, except for one uncle, he is the only one of his close family to have survived. It is sad but very often true in situations such as genocides: the very distance that saves him is what stops him from knowing more than a few murky details of what happened to his family, his land and its people in those terrible days; as a result, his knowledge of those events is characterized by uncertainty and fragmentation.

In Hotel Rwanda, we see tensions between the Hutu and Tutsi peoples lead to a civil war, in a country where corruption and bribes are seen as a normal way of doing business. Paul Rusesabagina is the manager of Sabena Hôtel des Mille Collines, a well known hotel in Rwanda. He is Hutu but his wife, Tatiana is Tutsi. His marriage is a source of friction with Hutu extremists; these are, after all, two of the factions which have been warring with each other for years. Perhaos most evident in this regard is George Rutaganda, a friendly supplier to the hotel who also is the local leader of Interahamwe, a brutal anti-Tutsi militia. As the political situation in the country deteriorates, Paul and his family observe neighbors being dragged from their homes and openly beaten in the streets. At first, Paul seems to take a selfish approach, doing only what is necessary to save him and his family and no one else. He does this in a number of ways: bribing public officials with money, alcohol, and other rarities that many were seeking during the time of war. Eventually, the chaos and turmoil ends up at his doorstep: a Rwandan Army officer threatens Paul and his neighbors. Although barely, Paul negotiates their safety, and brings everyone to the hotel, with the hope that people will be safer there. The United Nations and the Red Cross have set up refugee camps in Rwanda; however, these quickly become overcrowded. In a remarking departure from his former stance, Paul welcomes many of the refugees.

In the film, one of the most thoughtful aspects for me was the evolution of Paul’s character. He considers himself a moderate Hutu; after all, his wife is Tutsi. In a way, from the very beginning, he was always one willing to “buck the trend”; he did, after all, marry a Tutsi. At first, Paul only seems to want to do what is necessary to protect himself and his own family; his neighbors appear to be of little concern to him. However, as the genocide progresses, he is shown to have a more compassionate side to him; he eventually opens his hotel as a refugee camp of sorts, all while attempting to keep the image that he is operating a high class hotel.

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.