Last night, I purchased two movies: Hotel Rwanda and The Last King of Scotland.

My roommate and I watched Hotel Rwanda before we went to bed… now I’m sure that the majority of my  blog readers are not nearly as behind the eight ball as I am and have already seen this movie. For those of you who haven’t, you NEED to. It is a story that absolutely begs to be told. 

It is the true story of Paul Rusesebegina, a hotel manager in Rwanda during the civil war in 1994. He protected nearly 1300 Tutsi refugees in his hotel while the Hutu militia was at the gate, trying to “cleanse Rwanda of the cockroaches” by killing them with machetes. In my opinion, the worst part of this story is not the slaughter of a million people because of menial physical characteristics distinguishing about half of the population as an inferior race. (Much earlier in Rwanda’s history, Belgians created racial distinctions between the Hutus and the Tutsis by saying that those who were shorter, darker, and who had broader noses (Hutu) were separate from those who were taller, lighter, and who had thinner noses (Tutsi) . Sound familiar, America?) This, though horrible, is not the worst of what happened. 

This is a conversation between the main character and an American journalist who came to cover the war and got some intense footage of the massacre:

Paul: I am glad that you have shot this footage and that the world will see it. It is the only we have a chance that people  might intervene.

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

Paul: Paul, 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. [pause] What the hell do I know?

 

The worst part about this story is that it is completely true. We knew what was going on. Everyone knew what was going on; France, Belgium, England, America. And we did nothing but evacuate our citizens. Another person in the movie said, “They’re not going to do anything. Rwanda is not  worth a single vote to them.”

Is this seriously how our politics game is?? Do we seriously not have a single person in office who cares more about a million human lives than getting re-elected?? 

This movie just absolutely made me ill. 

Enough on this for now… Go check out this movie if you haven’t… maybe if enough of us knows, we can prevent our inaction next time… Oh, wait. Sudan? Darfur? and now Democratic Republic of the Congo? This madness is happening all over again.