Hotel Rwanda

I know, this movie has been out for ages, but I only saw it this week. I was really hesitant to rent the DVD and watch it as I don't cope well with violent movies.

Anyway, back to the movie.

Hotel Rwanda is based upon the story of Paul, a Hutu, that saved the lives of +- a 1 000 people by letting them stay in the luxury hotel (owned by Sabena airlines) he managed. He bribed the Hutu militia and rogue extremist Hutus into sparing the people in the hotel many times.

The world basically folded its hands and let the genocide happen. Europeans were evacuated and the UN left little more than a dozen after 10 UN soldiers were killed.

The genocide in Rwanda lasted 3 months in 1994, but an estimated 1 000 000 Tutsis and Hutus were killed during this time. Hutus that didn't want to participate in the genocide were killed or forced to kill neighbours and loved ones.

A favourite weapon of the extremists, a panga... Just how sick are you to get that close to a person to kill them with a "big knife"? Just how sick?

Background info on why this happened:
Rwanda has 2 groups the Hutus and the Tutsis. The Hutu are darker and "look more africa" whereas the Tutsis are lighter with smaller noses. When the Belgians got Rwanda from Germany (after the WW) they put the Tutsis in charge even though they are the minority. Rwanda got their independence from Belgium... and the Hutus took control.

Hatred for the Tutsis festered in the hearts of some Hutus and eventually it burst open like a volcano... and a mass genocide of the "cockroach Tutsis".

The sad thing about this was that once the violence started it spread like gangreen. Neighbours, friends and family were killed... mixed Hutu / Tutsi families broken up.

The Tutsis:
I read that the Tutsis may have been from Somalia, but that they have been in Rwanda so long that they spoke the same language as the Hutus and had the same customs etc too. It is also said that during the genocide the extremists threw the bodies of their victims into the river, hoping that it would carry them back to Somalia.

HOTEL RWANDA made me think of the xenophobic attacks in South Africa last year... unnecessary violence and hatred of other human beings.

May something like this never happen on the African continent again.