Gourevitch's 'Hotel Rwanda'

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Recommended: Denial of human rights in Ukraine and Rwanda

After reading this book all I can think about and imagine is the horror and pain that the Tutsi must have gone through and their families and friends who have survived to think about and re-live the memories they have of such a horrible event. In the book, Gourevitch really paints a picture by the way he describes what things looked like and the way things were during that time period. Since watching the movie from last semester Hotel Rwanda and reading this book it reminds me of the movie Tears of the Sun when the rebels are in the small communities murdering everyone in sight and Hitlers reign in which mass genocide that he and his army committed. The Hutu and the Tutsi have been in conflict with each other for years but after what happened in 1994 I don’t think that anyone will ever forget. In that year Rwandas Presidents plan was shot down and he was killed. In the days following is when the genocide started, because the Hutu believed that it was the Tutsi that shot down the plan and killed the President because he was a Hutu. The United Nations let this go because of the killing of ten of their own and because of their rules of engagement that resulted from the ten Belgian members being killed while trying to protect the Prime Minister. During a short time period of only a few months about 800,000 Tutsi and Hutu moderates were killed by the militia, other groups and even neighbors. It was said that the genocide had deemed the name of Hutu Power, this meant that they were plan and simply killing off people and as many as possible. All this started in Rwanda’ Capitol Kigali and spread outwardly from there, as the Hutu traveled they killed the Tutsi. The Hutu had set up road blocks and checked ID’s and killed Tutsi, t... ... middle of paper ... ...thinking twice about what they were doing. The second one I would say is how Paul, a regular popular man with the people of Rwanda, stood up to the Hutu and plea bargained with them and provided beer and money to leave the people who were in the hotel alone. Paul did not act alone he had the help of his staff and the UN Commander Dallaire and his troops. Thirdly I would say how the people of Rwanda came together in the end after all the genocide had stopped and reformed the country and government. After all the genocide and everything else that had been done by the Hutu, to that country, that took a lot to rebuild. I think that a lesson that can be taken away from this is that even though a country is divided instead of resorting to genocide at the worst level see what can be arranged and figure out what can be done before an entire country erupts in violence.

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