…And on November 2nd, 2005, he came and spoke in the Zorn Area at the University of Eau Claire Wisconsin. It was the first time I had ever seen the auditorium full to max capacity.
The occasion was a presentation on the history of the genocide slaughter in Rwanda, Africa, of the Tutsi by the Hutus, and what can be done to stop it from happening again. The night was a full bore emotional effect, with a showing of the triple Oscar-nominated film, “Hotel Rwanda”, about Mr. Rusesabagina’s experience protecting 1,200 people from machete wielding mobs while in his 5-star hotel, prior to Paul himself speaking at Zorn at 7:30.
After missing the initial wide release in theaters, and the release in budget theaters, and having never gone to the multiple screenings held by huge numbers of different friends mine, hearing of weeping acquaintances, and this movie single-handedly getting lots of friends of mine to change their very approach to volunteer work, (getting some to even start in the first place), I had heard a thing or two about this film. So since I was basically a Virgin on this whole story, I decided to opt for the whole violation of 4 hours of movie + speaker, witnessing worldwide apathy, ignorance, fury and hatred in the bowels of my soul and gut, sympathy and pathos for innocent victims, hopelessness and confusion at what I can do to stop this from happening, and rage at the human power of denial. Luckily I had a sandwich.
Here’s what you get from me:
Rent the movie.
You can do that forever, for the rest of time, so I’m not going to waste time discussing it. I’m moving on to the presentation, because you’ll never get to see that again.
Before the beginning of the forum proper, I read the crowd to see if I could tell who’d just seen the movie, or just had tickets to Rusesabagina, which ones had seen the movie for the first time, for the third, fourth, or fifth. Who’d been outraged, who’s still lazy, who was left weak and powerless, and who was left with a pin on fire under their ass.
When Paul Rusesabagina finally approached the stage, it was the first standing ovation just for walking up a pair of steps I had ever seen. He then proceeded to recite the history of the country of Rwanda, tracing each step that had led to where Rwanda was and had been, from the 1800’s to present day, and what had happened to it. He recalled the history of German and Belgium colonization, and their method towards splitting the native population of Rwanda into Tutsi and Hutu tribes; arbitrarily by nose width and skin tone, selected by the foreign occupiers. No, I can’t remember who had which features, and you don’t need to know. All you need to know is that they were bullshit reasons for government endorsed racism seeded amongst the native people to make them easier to handle with infighting, and leaving no forethought to what would happen if the socially encouraged hatred and separatism was allowed to flourish.
At first, either/or, one or the other of the “tribes” was deemed superior to the other, and put in charge by the invaders, leading to the initial antagonism. After the Europeans left, there was a back-lash by whichever group had been oppressed, leading to a retort by the other one, which began a reaction by the other one, leading to massives of moronic retaliations of back-and-forthery, which is always how business rolls in the international crime scene known as diplomacy.
On April 16, 1994, the democratically elected Rwandan president was killed when his plane was shot down. He was a Hutu. This began a nationwide retaliatory slaughter of the 15% minority Tutsis, by the 85% population of Hutus, egged on (according to the movie) by a nationwide radio broadcast of hate-speech, calling for extermination of the “Tutsi cockroaches”.
A genocide, the proportions of which were the biggest in recent memory, and maybe the fastest in history—1 million Tutsis and any Hutu caught defending Tutsis, in 3 months vs., lets say, about 1939-1945 12 million of anyone who got the Nazi’s cranky = 500,000 per 3 months, average? That about right?
In the odd 35 years, there have been leaps, bounds, and drug addled addictions to making technology the most prevalent force on the planet. But it couldn’t spare a swivel of a camera, and CNN couldn’t spare a day of its life, to seeing these things happen, showing these things to the sons-of-bitches in charge, and ask “WHY JESUS CHRIST LORD GOD?!? I just watched a man’s head roll across a street! WHY?!?” and watching their reaction? Clearly, it’s not the shine of the toy, it’s the dirty thoughts of the child using it that we need to be concerned about. The Hutus didn’t even need to train the people away. They did it door to door, with machetes. No general, major, lieutenant, private, pull the switch. No hierarchy of power to blame. This was face to face, and they got away with every swing of it, for three months, over a million times. No one even knows who shot down the president’s plane in the first place. 11 years after the fact, there’s been no investigation, no charges filed, and I’d be surprised if the bodies have even been gathered yet. “Oh shit, we were going to get around to that!”. And we all squirm uncomfortably at the implication that maybe? could they have? shot his plane down themselves? The Hutus shoot a Hutu president, blame it on the minority, and take their vengeance? Who would stop them? People waiting to pull the trigger and kill someone already have the drive to end a life, you would just need to give them a good reason. They made their own?
You want to blame me for being paranoid and playing conspiracy theorist. I want to blame the lack of any straight facts or investigation for your inability to counter me with anything other than “you crazy”. That’s why people get prosecuted for major political killings; so delusional pseudo-journalists can’t fill in the gaps with their self-appointed fluff stories. But not for this one, 11 years after the act. Oh well. T.S. for you.
After the history of Rwanda itself, Paul Rusesabagina began telling his stories of the 2 ½ month ordeal itself, straightening out Hollywood flourishes and acts at quickening pace and certain aspects of story, since it all had to be condensed to 2 hours in film. Of course, stories of things that weren’t shown in the movie were obligatory, like UN peacekeepers leaving from the gates at one end of a base while machete wielding Hutus entered and began from the other. Also, (though it was alluded to in the film, it was never fully explained), here’s a linguistics lesson: if a representative if one of the members of the UN council were to use the word “genocide”, they would’ve been forced to step in as prevention. But since the beheadings were always referred to as “acts of genocide”, that absolved responsibility. “Acts of”. That’s it. The prefix wasn’t removed, and the 2 ½ months in the summer of ’94 in Rwanda were only referred to as “genocide” (at least by anyone that mattered) in November—4 months after the fact.
Towards the end of the presentation, Rusesabagina told about his attempts to call for help while barricaded in the hotel. He told how every time he reached someone, out of the country, to call for help, he was forwarded. Put on hold. Handed off to someone else. Every time. It was always someone else’s department. As if the only thing that led to any action was the pure annoyance caused by the phone calls and faxes of over 1,200 people hiding out from machete wielding killing squads. “Send some soldiers over there, see what they want, and get those people to shut up already! They’re clogging our lines!”
During the Q & A at the end of the forum presentation, a person mentioned to Mr. R that the movie “leaves one feeling helpless”. And here’s where I tie in the seemingly immaturely shocking headline I prefaced this article with into something meaningful, thought-provoking, and maybe even emotional, but definitely making an attempt at pathos. The thing Paul Rusesabagina has over Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King JR. is that he’s here. He’s alive. He’s real. Someone can do something of his magnitude. And he didn’t step into the job of saving these people. It was dumped on him. The entire world was there, and as they pulled out on buses, trucks, and jeeps, UN and international journalists alike, they watched a five-star hotel with 1,268 unarmed people in the middle of a war field shrink in their rear-view mirrors, and left one guy holding the ball. Teddy Roosevelt said “Do what you can with what you have.” The sickness would be if this ordeal left people wishing they had their own genocide to prove that they were a hero, “just like Paul Rusesabagina!” He was stuck in the middle. That’s nothing to be proud of. Our job, from out here, is to make sure that when our phone rings, and it’s someone asking for our help…..“Someone else’s business”. “Someone else’s department.”
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