Reflection on "Hotel Rwanda"

Q: Post a reflection on "Hotel Rwanda," talk about the movie's intention to impact you and its actual effects.

It was my first time watching the movie Hotel Rwanda and this movie definitely informed me about a historical genocide happenend in 1994 in Rwanda. I never knew that there was a severe genocide at the time I was young and that it was only 14 years ago. It was a strange new feeling to me that this historical mass casualty and many people’s death was caused by political conflict between people had happenened when I was already known; it just seemed that it was an big event that could have happened in era that I was not even born yet. I think it was strange because I have never gone through or thought about going through an atmosphere that when everyone I knew are in danger by the threatening powerful group of people. It was just amazing that the children who were featured in the movie are about the same age as I am right now and they were actually in that event. I wonder that if I could have gone through the time like that when no one is sure when and how they are going to live or die.
I think this is what this movie affected me after I watched it, and I think it was the movie producers’ intention in creating this movie. They informed people about the Rwandan Genocide that happened few years ago: what happenend and other unknown events were in that period of time. It impacts people to recognize the casualties and social crisis that happened in a small country in Africa. However, even more than that, I think that this movie was a big influence to me and hopefully to other people about the concerns and interest the other countries give to Rwanda. IN the movie, even though the UN was there in Rwanda to stop the fight, many of the UN’s action disappointed me. I didn’t know that one of the most influencial organization created for every country’s peace would have made some mistakes, and this movie showed me how the reality was at that time. I think it was one of the producers’ intentions to create this movie and inform the people how Rwandan citizens had to stand against the enemy, without much help of other countries’ help, to survive this cruel mass murdering. This movie was an effective influence to the viewers on telling them how the situation of the Rwandans were like; it surely worked on me.

Rwnada Genocide

The happening of the genocide in Rwanda was between two ethnic groups and it was begun as the Hutu president of Rwanda was killed. It was hard to understand that there still remains the hatefulness among different ethnic groups in 2oth century, but this whole “genocide” should be remembered because it reminds us that there should be no more violence or control over or by between two or more “ethnic groups” by nowadays or in the future. The happening of the genocide is started with the death of a Hutu president of Rwanda and the Hutu extremists taking over the government. The tension between these two groups turned severer. The Hutus, as the government was ruled by them, tried to get rid of the Tutsis as well as the “moderate Hutu politicians.” Here, I think these Hutu politicians wanted to track down their own ethnic people at first time because they thought the moderate Hutu politicians were no help to them in taking over the Tutsi “cockroaches.” After the 100 days of genocide, 8000 people per day were killed or victimized. It is unimaginable that these Hutus can ever kill those many lives every day for 100 days. Even more what makes me sad is that the UN and the other countries tried to help these Rwandan people from danger but many of them retrieved because of their country’s safety. Belgium troops withdrew their UN soldiers from Rwanda, the UN only evacuated the foreigners, not even helping enforcing the Rwandans to save their life. I would recognize that it was the Rwandan Tutsis who were mostly targeted in this genocide but not many help from foreign country was there to help them consistently. Also it was the developing countries that stayed to help the genocide to end, not the wealthy countries with higher quality of equipments and number of soldiers. Even though President Clinton apologized with his speech ‘Clinton Apology” that the US and the world community did not do much as they could and should have done to help stop the genocide, I still think there still should be more caring of other countries to another country that is in a very dangerous situation. I think that way because these different countries are life one neighbor especially when they are in a big group like UN to participate in world problems. If there could have been more help of other countries in this event, there could have not been as much as one out of 6 children who are orphans in Rwanda today.
In the movie “Hotel Rwanda,” there is a source of media that was used to tell the watchers how the situation was at that time: radio. Out side this movie, there are televisions, video, internet, and newspaper and more. In this assignment I used internet and articles as well as a video. It was a good way to know the information with these media I used today, but I like the interesting way of using the media in class, watching a movie and paying attention to the radio comments in it because I haven’t known anything about the Rwandan Genocide and it also gave deeper information on what exactly happened at that time by the radio in the movie.