I'm really angry after seeing this movie. Not because it was a bad movie. It's not the greatest movie ever, but its subject completely overwhelms the movie and any discussion of its relative merits. Maybe you could argue that makes it a good movie, but it doesn't matter one bit. It's about a terrible thing that happened 10 years ago that should never have happened at all. Recently I thought about Rwanda a couple of times - this Tsunami made me think about it, the war in Iraq made me think about it, but this movie held it up in my face and forced me to look right at it. I feel ashamed that I never did so before.
The Tsunami made me think about it because thousands of people died in poor countries from a natural disaster that no one could have prevented (unless western countries had provided the same protection to those poor countries as they provided for themselves). The people of the west cared and gave as much as they could, immediately. In Rwanda nearly a million people were murdered in an attempt to systematically drive them to extinction, while the west had advance notice of it and did nothing to stop it. Can it really be that the people of the (rich western) world care about the poor people of the world, but the evil bastards at the controls only care about the oil and selling more guns? Or do the people of the world only care because it happened somewhere they went on holiday?
Iraq made me think about it because the US saw it as SO important to protect the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein that they imposed sanctions against him, killing many, and then invaded, killing many more, all against international law and the U.N.'s authority. Thanks guys, way to save the world. Oh yeah - Bill Clinton, you are a cunt. Kofi Annan - you are a waste of fucking space.
Seeing this movie is important. Thinking about what happened is important. DOING something about it is important. I haven't worked out what exactly yet, but I'm working on it...
sigh.
Read the timeline of events in Rwanda at pbs.org
Read the detailed report on the method of the slaughter from the 900 page complete report on the genocide
Read interviews with people who were there or who gave a shit
Maybe you forgot what war was like - take a look at the Memory Hole to remind yourself
Donate NOW to the Survivor's Fund (SURF)
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