The World Watched And Did Nothing…
I came across this old movie, Hotel Rwanda, that I missed out watching back home a couple of years back.
The movie’s about the two central Africa tribes, Tutsi and Hutu and a civil war gone horribly wrong. A civil war gone horribly wrong, did I just say that? I mean what more can go wrong than a war within a country.. I found out just that while seeing the movie. There’s a single word that’s used to describe that… Genocide
It sent chills down my spine, just imagining that an entire race of people got nearly wiped off from the face of earth. 1 million lives in 100 days. for what.. and why?
For those of you who don’t know, the cause of the civil war was power struggle, stemming from guess what, imperial rule by the belgians (what the fcuk !) over Rwanda. Just like the brits, they used the classic approach of “Divide and Conquer” declaring the Tutsi as ‘more able’ and ‘better suited’ to run Rwanda when they left, leaving the Hutu (who were a majority, btw) embittered as they were known to be ‘short’ and ‘flat-nosed’. The Hutu eventually rebeled and got control of the country, turning tutsi’s into a rebel militia. This continued till 1994 and things would never be the same from that year onwards…
After a long standing conflict, when peace was finally made between the Hutu president was assasinated the very day. This spurned a massacre never seen before… The Hutu militia spared no Tutsi in sight… resulting in a genocide. The world, fully aware of what’s going on, chose to do nothing… as Rwanda was important to no one.
The movie is about a hotel manager, Paul R., who saved the lives of 1284 Tutsi people by hiding them in a 5 star hotel in Rwanda, in the guise of them being ‘guests’ . Torn between his Hutu origin and a Tutsi wife, he used his wit, public relations and his resolve to protect the ‘right to live’ to save a 1000 men, women and children.
I felt so sad after completing the movie, that I was just sitting on my bed for 5 mins, closing my eyes, absorbing what I saw. I asked myself… WHY? why did no one come forward and stop this. How can one sleep at night knowing he/she could have done something to save a million lives?
It reminded me of the Hindu-Muslim riots we had in Gujarat (a western state in India) and ‘92 riots of Bombay. Although it wasn’t genocide, it was bad enough.
No one deserves this… no one, trust me.
