Rwanda Film Analysis

During the 20th century, approximately 174 million people have been killed by the government only and mostly by the communist governments (Dominic & Abimbola, 39). The figures are quite shocking. This clearly depicts that government exploits the innocent people and incite them to stand against their brothers and sisters. The same story happened in Rwanda, It was the Habyarimanian government, who planned the genocide a long time before to retain their political power. The magnitude of the genocide was so intense that on the very first day 30,000 people were mascaraed in Kigali only, a rate far faster than the Holocaust. To prove this reality, towards the middle of the movie there is a scene when Paul was coming back from George’s warehouse after
collecting ration. Due to the intense fog his driver lost the control of his van and it jerked many times as it was moving over the broken road and stopped. On investigation, Paul found the thousands of corpses in a row. The director succeeded to show the intensity of the killings by showing a heap of dead bodies with missing body parts, naked women bodies and little children drenched with blood in this scene. This illustrates that how brutally the innocent people were killed for no reason. According to the UN reports, 75% of the Tutsi population was exterminated in the genocide.
Genocidal rape is another negative consequence of any genocide.
According to the Rothe and Mullins genocidal rape is defined as “ A systematically organized military tactic of terror and genocide used to (1) generate fear in subdued population, (2) humiliate the population (both men and women), (3) derogation of women (spoilage of identity), (4) create a cohort of mixed-ethnic children to maintain the humiliation/spoilage/domination. Such a use of sexual assault is an orchestrated tactic of warfare”( Kruger, 2). In Rwanda after the assassination of president, all the roads were blocked by Hutu militia; these blocked roads and Hutu barriers eventually became the base of executions and rapes. The major aim of this sexual violence was degradation and humiliation of the Tutsi. Tutsi women were brutally raped and their sexual organs were injured with spears, gun barrels, machetes and acids too. According to the Amnesty International report of 2004, approximately 250,000 to 500,000 Rwandan women were raped during the genocide (Mukamana and Brysiewicz, 380). It is the matter of argument that systematic, government planned rape and sexual enslavement proves to be an
effective method of dispersing a population.
How could a government think of this? Is this fair to destroy the life of rape victim for ever ? Mullins argues that genocides always produce high levels of sexual violence. In order to prove this, he conducted a detailed research on Rwanda rape survivors, he found that most of the rapes during genocide were opportunistic, as most of the common men took advantage of the social disorder and raped innocent women. (Mullins 23).The director shows this in a scene, when Paul saw hundreds of naked women, inside the Hutus military camp, being raped and sexually abused by the Hutu militia and other activist as they were prostitutes. This scene shows the massive sexual violence at macro level. Moreover, it was very difficult for victims to prove that they were raped due to the stigma associated with it. Rape has a long lasting physical, physiological and mental effects on the victims. From a psychosocial perspective, many scholars have stressed on psychosocial effects such as dissociation, psychotic symptoms, self-harming behaviors, and sexual dysfunction, etc, which are even more fatal than physical effects. For instance, social death of the victim is the most profound mental effect. It is the condition in which the victim
loses the interest in life and loss the self-identity and self-worth. According to the research conducted by Kruger, it has been found that the survivors of genocidal rape have been exposed to traumatic stressors e.g. death of their family members, torture, forced impregnation, war-related injuries and illnesses, lack of support systems, stresses of dislocation, culture shock and sense of safety(Kruger,41). Another major ill effect of the genocide is HIV effected impregnation through genocidal rapes, which is considered as one of the best weapon and wholesale tactic of military during the wars. The Rwandan victims experienced the same trauma and according to a report it has been found that approximately 70 percent of rape victims were found HIV-positive. HIV was used as a major war weapon by the Rwandan militia. Also, the children born of rape are considered secondary victims. In fact these secondary victims suffered more than the rape victims. It is estimated that nearly 5,000 children have been born as a result of rape during the genocide. Society has labelled them with different names as ‘children of bad memories’, ‘child of hate’, ‘little killers’, and ‘the intruder’. This labelling destroyed their social life and they faced with distinct social stigmas and also abandoned by their mothers. (Mukamana & Brysiewicz 382-383).
Most of us are thinking that what the international community and United Nations was doing during this genocide. Yes! they showed their presence, but for name sake only. In spite of stopping this carnage, the whole world, turned a blind eye toward Rwanda's horrors. Despite the powerful military strength and resources, western world is condemned for their catastrophic failure; it did’nt fail to prevent but later failed to stop or even to slow down the genocide. Although the United Nation has sent around a shoddily equipped troops of around 2500 soldiers from different countries under the command of Canadian Lieutenant General Romeo Dellaire to maintain law and order in Rwanda, but they failed to stop this genocide due to insufficient support and power from international community. In the movie, Lt. Gen. Dallaire role is played by Col Oliver. When Gloria, a foreign journalist asked Col. Oliver that whether the UN intervene to stop the bloodshed? He replies, “Unfortunately we're here as peace-keepers not peace makers, we can't take an aggressive role”. The international community intervened only and only to rescue their citizens only. Towards the end of the movie there is a scene, when French forces arrived to evacuate people from the hotel. All the refuges were hopeful and happy. But soon their happiness turned to sadness, when they came to know that French forces are there to evacuate only foreigners leaving them behind hopeless. Col. Oliver expresses his frustration showing the indifference by western world to Paul, “The west think you are dirt, less than dirt, worthless. You're fucking black! You're not even nigger, you're African. They're not staying to stop this thing. They're gonna fly right out of here with their people. They are only taking the whites” (Hotel Rwanda). The world powers including United States, U.K., Russia and France failed to stop this carnage. Dallaire argues, “the developed world, impassive and apparently unperturbed, sat back and watched the unfolding apocalypse or simply changed channels” (Dallaire, xvii). Dallaire warned the United Nations in Jan 1994 that there were clear signs that the extremists and Hutu militia was preparing a large scale genocide. He comments, “the Americans never took Rwanda or me seriously” (Dallaire, 84). He also requested for permission for preemptive attack on Hutu militia, but the permission was not given by the United Nations due to ‘international indifference’ and the lack of political will. This fundamental indifferences and peace keeping role of UN resulted into the massive genocide. Another failure of the United Nation was to intervene early to shut down RTLM which had become the voice of the devil in Rwanda (Dellaire, 18). After the genocide began, the UN reduced its troops strength to 270 only rather than strengthening it. Although in the last weeks of the genocide, the French troops intervened under ‘Operation Turquoise’ to help the victims, but their main purpose was to providing protection to genociders to neighboring countries rather than helping the survivors. It was the Rwanda Patriotic Front led by President Kagame, who finally succeeded to stop this genocide. UN even refused to name the killings as ‘genocide’ and delayed in providing any required political, economical or military help to stop the slaughter (McMillan 3, 13). The director succeeded to show the failure of world’s intervention in a scene, when Paul asked Jack Daglish about the reaction of genocide news to the world. Jack sadly replied, “I think that when people turn on their TVs and see this footage, they'll say, Oh my God, that's horrible, and then they'll go back to eating their dinners”(Hotel Rwanda).
International failure to stop the Rwandan genocide is matter of shame for western world and rest of the world need to learn lessons from this slaughter. It is pertinent to mention that genocide is the result of a systematic development, culminating in the crime of crimes which implies that it is possible to prevent genocide by finding its causes. Prevention is better than cure always. It is best to detect the roots of genocide early on or before it even begins the best solution to deal with genocide is that population must be educated about the abuses of ethnic identity and ethnic cleansing. World should adopt the political re-socialization to replace nationalistic attitudes and value systems with more international and humanitarian based ethos (Krugar 103). The international community can prevent the genocide by various methods such as negotiations, mediation, coercive methods like defaulters and sanctions, use of high technology like jamming of radio stations etc. Moreover international communities need to break their silence and resolve indifferences and to implement the political will; they should be committed towards the principles of power sharing, consensus building, post conflict recover and timely action.
Hotel Rwanda conveys a very powerful message to the world. Watch out and Wake up. Otherwise what happened in Rwanda could happen anywhere. It could be argued that the failure of intervention of world resulted the killing of one million people; If they had taken interest in this matter, many lives could have been saved. The main argument of the film is how ‘lack of political will’ and ‘international differences’ among the developed nations towards under developed countries contributed to a mass genocide and this failure is the matter of deep concern and a sensitive lesson for the whole mankind. Hotel Rwanda is telling the audience that to wake up and act now, because the failure to act on time could be extremely expensive for the whole world.