COUNT The letters G, E, N, O, C, I, D, and add another E. Notice that they are only eight and form an average tri-syllabic English word. Yet, when put together, these letters instantaneously conjure countless gloomy images of death and fear. Such was evident in the 2004 award-winning film Hotel Rwanda. The film, which many describe as inspirational, is one of the few clear-cut movies adapted from a real story of genocide.
History is not made of random tragedies. One of our vanguards as human beings is that we, above all other creations, have the most power to shape our own lives. It is worth saying that many romantics amongst us believe in that idea which is called destiny (i.e. that our life follows a sequence of pre-planned events because it was made to follow so since our birth). In spite this, however, is the absolute certainty that we are capable to dictate our own lives. In every moment, we are given options to pick out one from and problems to use our reasoning for. To prevent tragedies is exactly what the human mind thinks for, the human heart feels for, and the human body acts for… ideally.
Such was not the case in the events of 1994 in Rwanda, East-Central Africa. Since the 15th century, it has already been known that Rwandans were separated into three groups: the Hutus, the Tutsis, and the Twas. However, it was only 13 years ago that such discrepancies were underscored and magnified.
The wickedly famous 1994 Rwandan genocide testifies that history is not made of random tragedies. The “deliberate and systematic extermination” of Tutsis was spurred in 1990 by the arrival to Rwanda of the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) from Uganda. Their invasion of Rwanda led top Rwandan government officials, mainly Hutu, to begin secretly training young men into informal armed bands called Interahamwe (“those who fight together”), which led further to other complications. But this was only a break smack in the middle of the story. The unity of the Rwandans was severed as early as the 15th century, when the Tutsis, coming from the north, conquered the area, became the ruling power, and established a strictly-enforced feudal system.
The protectorate was taken by Belgium from Germany after WWI, and though the Belgians acknowledged native rule, they were far harsher. The Belgians, taking the Christian churches as instrument, used the minority Tutsi upper class over the lower classes of Tutsis and Hutus. The Belgians used the upper class Tutsis to instigate forced labor and to amass severe taxes. In short, the Belgians used the few Tutsi upper class citizens as buffers against the people's anger, thus underlining even more the disparity between the Hutus and the Tutsis.
Upon inspection, the root cause of the 1994 atrocity is perceptible. It has, like the greater part of our lives and of the world’s encounters, an unmistakable cause that was not instantaneous, nor accidental. What’s the main difference between the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and the Rwanda genocide in 1994, both of which are infamous for having taken numerous lives? The latter is definitely not a random tragedy.
History is not made of transitory events. The events which surrounded Hotel Rwanda may be transitory in their out-and-out manifestation. It lasted only for several months and ended on July 4 of the same year, although reports say the death toll reached almost a million. The genocide was only the icing on the cake, the finale, the climax of a long-enduring process. In literary terms, the genocide in Rwanda was the denouement of an ill system which has been born in the 15th century with the invasion of the Tutsis, allowed to grow in the 90s by the Belgian parasites, and which has sprouted into that which we recall in Hotel Rwanda. Though the unpopular atrocity lasted for several months, its causes were enduring, and its effects are far from being short-lived. It was not transitory; it was just in-the-making.
History is made by structural deformities. In this case, the deformities were in more places than one. First, the structure of the Rwandan society is in itself deformed. See how there are factions within the country itself. Rwanda is a nation: that cannot be denied. Like, the Philippines, it comprises nations with several tribes, in this case, the Tutsis and the Hutus being two. The problem comes with the revelation that there is little difference between the two. As the reporter called Jack said, “They could be twins!” The Hutus and the Tutsis speak the same language and bear a similar culture. What drew the line between the two is an expression of social class or caste rather than ethnicity. Consider how the protagonist himself is a Hutu and yet, have married a Tutsi. When you come right down to it, there is little, if any, significant difference. What was even more disturbing is how the past is incorporated in the present of the 1994 Rwandan victims. Some of these people have not been around during the Belgian rule, and yet the radical Hutus remembered how the Tutsis’ ancestors treated them. They used the past to justify the present, which is not always a good choice.
Another deformity, which they used as a strategy, needless to say, is with the Belgians. They used kinsmen against kinsmen, citizens against citizens, Rwandans against Rwandans in their attempt (a successful one) to control the majority of the Rwandans, which are mostly Hutus.
And finally, there is the sickening moral astigmatism of the UN, which turned an astigmatic eye and deaf ears to the pleas of the unfortunate, which even had the audacity to proclaim itself as a “peacekeeper, not a peacemaker”.
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