Essay On Hotel Rwanda

Millions of people around the world have never heard of the Rwandan genocide. May do not even know where Rwanda is or even what a genocide is. In 1994 the culture clash between the Hutu and the Tutsi exploded into a civil war and mass genocide. The United Nations along with the developed world sat back doing little or nothing and watched thousands of people die. The movie Hotel Rwanda illustrates the powerful representation of that horrific genocide, and highlights key points important to international politics. The movie sets the stage by following a hotel manager, a Hutu. He is struggling to keep his family and friends alive, while trying to maintain the integrity of his hotel. The storyline shows the beginnings of the war and mass killings. It illustrates the long time feud between the Hutu and the Tutsi, the movie alludes to the fact that Belgium created this feud. In the movie reporters try to figure out the differences between the Hutu and the Tutsi, physically they look identical. The so called differences were created by the Belgians, the Hutu and the Tutsi were more alike than different. The movie itself is very powerful, to see the hatred portrayed could only be imagined by people today. Unless you were there to experience it, the nest best thing would be to educate yourself as to what happened and how it happened. This movie although entertaining shows the different things that happened during the genocide.
The disgust towards one another is said to be more than just ethnic struggle, but rather
more about economic struggle (Admin). In the late 19th century Rwanda was under Belgian rule and only further increased tension between the two, they took the minority (Tutsi) and put them into power. International involvement was key in creating conflict, Belgium made each person carry ethnic identification cards, similar to the Nazi era (Admin). The Belgian colonialists allowed the minority, the Tutsi, to earn higher educations and have higher positions of power than the Hutu, leading to distain and envy (Admin). After the departure from Rwanda, all the built up anger and resent meant was unleashed and led to the civil war. The Hutu wanted revenge against the Tutsi for the many years of oppression. The oppression even though was not entirely the fault of the Tutsi, they became the scape goat. Similar to the Nazi era and the mass killing of Jewish people, a group of people felt abandoned and taken advantage of, so someone in power pointed a finger and they were to blame. About 800,000 people were killed, while international governmental organizations (IGO’s) such as the United Nations (UN) did very little in stopping the massacre. “The UN and its member states failed Rwanda in deplorable ways in 1994, ignoring evidence that a genocide was planned, refusing to act once it was under way and finally abandoning the Rwandan people when they most needed protection (Winfield).” The UN’s purpose is to protect human rights and in this situation they were “unable or unwilling to act on information from the field that a massive slaughter was occurring and that they needed to do something to stop it (Winfield).” The Rwandan did make an attempt to sign a peace treaty with rebel groups, but all attempts failed and/or were not held to the agreement. It is said that, if more people would have cared, if there would have been a greater attempt in foreign aid, less people could have died. An IR theory that may explain this would be realism combined with a “clash of civilizations”.
In realism human nature is selfish and the key of the state is to maximize power (especially military power). As for the “clash of civilizations” the conflict is between cultures and not states. In Rwanda the fight is within the state between the two cultures (Hutu and Tutsi). By combining both theories it can explain the fight for power between the
two. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed and many more that have no idea what happened or what caused it. International relations emerged to try and label and create concepts that run the many states around the world. However even though there may be theories that could possibly explained what happened here, there could have been more ways in trying to avoid what happened. Genocide can be explained or labeled, but should have been prevented.