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by Gaetana Caldwell-Smith
& Michael Schreiber– February, 2005
“Hotel Rwanda.” Starring Don Cheadle, Sophie Okonedo, and
Nick Nolte; directed by Terry George.
“Hotel Rwanda” is a heartrending exposé of the consequences of the
policies of the major Western powers toward the neo-colonial world. The
European and
U.S. imperialists orchestrated the conditions for the 1994 genocidal
slaughter in the Central African country of Rwanda—and then failed to
provide any
protection or relief from it.
In a little over three months, some 800,000 Tutsis as well as Hutus
who were opponents of the Rwandan government were murdered. Three
million—over a third of the population—fled the country to escape death (or
so they hoped).
The film tells the true story of Paul Rusesabagina, a Hutu, who, at
the time, was the natty manager of Hotel Des Mille Collins, a four-star
Belgian-owned hotel, in the Rwandan capital, Kigali. The film is based somewhat
loosely on Philip Gourevitch’s 1998 book “We Regret to Inform You …
[partial title].”
Don Cheadle provides a strong and entirely believable performance as
Rusesabagina. Cheadle embodies Rusesabagina’s spirit and character,
conveying them beyond the screen through the expressions on his face
and in his eyes.
The core of this harrowing film is a chronology of how Rusesabagina,
using his skills as a businessman in a prestigious position—yet still a
servant to his
guests—rescued 1300 Tutsi and Hutu by sequestering them in his
hotel. The film not only illustrates the courage of one man unwittingly
cast into a position he did not seek but also shows that people can hang on
to their humanity when confronted with unhinged barbarity.
Reports from journalists stationed in Kigali, staying in the hotel,
made the world aware of what was going on. The New York Times and The
Washington Post published articles about “piles of corpses six feet high”
and eyewitness accounts of the slaughter. One memorable article concerned
the massacre of 1200 Rwandans who had gathered in a church, believing they were
safe.
Early in “Hotel Rwanda,” Rusesabagina is driving home after a day’s work,
listening to the radio to disturbing reports of Hutu militias patrolling
the streets and flushing people from their homes. His wife, Tatiana (Sophie
Okonedo), and young children are fine, yet during dinner they hear shouts
and gunshots
nearby. Rushing outside to the garden of their gated middle-class
home, they watch a neighbor being dragged from his house and beaten by
gun-wielding men in camouflage. Paul’s wife thinks the man must have done something
wrong.
Back in the house, they discover one of their children is missing. A
search of the grounds reveals him hiding beneath shrubs, unable to speak.
Whatever horrific event he witnessed had rendered him mute.
Thus begins Paul Rusesabagina’s acts of heroism. He brings his
family and some close relatives back to the hotel. Soon the hotel’s
courtyard is full of Tutsis begging for help. All the while, the hotel
continues serving its mostly white foreign guests, who are vaguely aware
that something is going on “out there.”
But as long as their needs are met, their suites clean, the dining room
open, the finest Scotch poured, everything is fine.
Terrified Rwandans phone relatives and friends from the hotel for
help in getting out of the country. Less than 20 succeed, and
Rusesabagina’s wife is one.
Still, while traveling to the airport, they face death when the UN
truck, driven by UN Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, in charge of
“peacekeeping” efforts (Nick Nolte in a sympathetic, understated role), is
halted at a roadblock and Hutu militants attack.
At one point, German, Belgian, and French troops arrive at the hotel
and there’s glimmer of hope, but Dallaire tells Rusesabagina that they’ve
come to
evacuate only the European tourists and journalists. In the pouring rain, bereft families,
abandoned in the courtyard, watch as the Europeans climb into buses and leave.
Rusesabagina pleads with Gen. Dallaire to ask the UN for help,
plaintively asking Dallaire if anyone cares what’s happening to them.
Dallaire bluntly replies, “No. Because you’re dirt, you know that? The
whole world thinks you’re dirt … worse than niggers.”
By the expression on Rusesabagina’s face you can see that he now knows
that even in his relatively prestigious position he had been scammed all
along by the white establishment. He was just a pawn in the game that the
big powers were playing in his country.
Director Terry George, in tying the scope of the atrocities down to
the role Rusesabagina played, gives “Hotel Rwanda” focus. But it doesn’t
answer the
question of what prompted the Hutu death squads to engage in rampant
carnage and to systematically wipe out a people with whom Hutus had once
lived peaceably.
The colonial exploitation of Rwanda goes back to the late 19th
century, when the European powers divided up the African continent in order
to mine its rich
natural resources and to exploit its people in slavery-like conditions.
Germany was Rwanda’s first colonial master, but after Germany’s defeat in
the First World War, possession passed to Belgium, which already ruled the
neighboring Congo.
Before the European occupation, Rwanda had enjoyed a rather flexible
hierarchy, with a Tutsi king who dominated the predominately Hutu farmers.
The term “Tutsi” apparently once meant a person rich in cattle, while
“Hutu” meant a subordinate of a more powerful person. Eventually, “Tutsi”
came to refer to the more privileged caste as a whole, while “Hutu”
referred to the mass of people.
Social mobility and intermarriage tended to blur the differences
between the ethnic groups. The Belgian authorities acted to deepen the
divisions, however,
requiring all Rwandans to register themselves and their families
according to “race,” which was then stamped onto the passports they had to
carry.
Furthermore, Belgium decreed that Tutsis alone should be officials
in the colonial government; Hutus were excluded from all power and from
higher education. Belgian academics
justified this discrimination on a racist premise: The Tutsis, according to
their pseudo-history, were descended from a North African “Ethiopid”
people. Thus, the Tutsis were racially superior since they apparently had
some “Caucasoid” (white) blood in them, as opposed to the “Bantu” Hutus from
the south.
Today, the Tutsi (who today make up less than 15 percent of the
Rwandan population), the Hutu, and the Pygmy Twa are generally considered
by genealogists to belong to a single ethnic group, sharing a common
language and cultural traditions.
In September 1961, one year before Belgium granted independence,
some 80 percent of Rwandans voted to replace the Tutsi monarchy with a
republic. Throughout the 1960s, Hutu forces—helped militarily and politically
by Belgium—drove over 300,000 Tutsis into exile while killing some 20,000
Tutsis in communal violence.
By 1989, a severe economic crisis and famine was brought on by a
phenomenal drop in world coffee prices due to Western capitalist
intervention. When Rwanda sought to borrow funds to keep afloat, the World
Bank forced the country to accept severe fiscal measures, including devaluing
its currency, which greatly worsened conditions for the poor.
The following year, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), based mainly
on Tutsi refugees who had regrouped in Uganda as well as some dissident
Hutus, mounted an armed campaign in the north of Rwanda, where they succeeded
in occupying some territory. The RPF demanded that the Tutsi exiles be
allowed to return to Rwanda and that the corrupt regime of Hutu strongman Habyarimana
be replaced by a democratic government open to all ethnicities.
President Habyarimana and his cohorts used the RPF advance to
portray the Tutsi population as “traitors,” hoping to rally Hutus behind
his regime. In April
1991, after circulating a false account that Kigali had been
attacked, the government arrested thousands of Tutsis and Hutu political
opponents.
Massacres of Tutsis multiplied over the next few years, often perpetrated
by Hutu militias with links to the Rwandan military, the National Police,
and high government circles.
In spite of the massacres, the French government of “Socialist”
Francois Mitterrand continued to supply the Rwandan military with arms,
training, and over 1000 French troops—which joined in the battles against the
Rwandan Patriotic Front.
The French government, in fact, covered up for its neocolonial
allies in Rwanda, though its officials certainly knew of Rwandan government
plans to
slaughter the Tutsis. French diplomats claimed that reports of massacres
against Tutsis were “just rumors,” and praised the Habyarimana regime as
“rather respectful of human rights.”
But France was not the only Western power that was culpable in the
Rwandan genocide. Samantha Power, in an article that appeared in Atlantic
On-Line, based on the de-classified Rwanda documents unearthed by a George
Washington University group, wrote that, at the time, U.S. State Department
diplomat Prudence Bushnell issued warnings about the increasing violence in
that country. Rebuffed, she was told, “Look Pru, these people do this from
time to time.”
At one point in “Hotel Rwanda,” we learn that a plane carrying
President Habyarimana, along with Burundi President Cyprein Ntaryamira, a
moderate Hutu, was shot down near Kigali. The Rwandan government blamed the
Tutsis for the disaster, though some allege that Hutu dissidents or even
the French government was behind it.
The assassination of Habyarimana provided the spark for the
“extermination” of Tutsis to begin. Excerpts from Samantha Powers’s Atlantic
On-Line article stated that Prudence Bushnell received a cable from
Kigali’s U.S. Embassy warning of mass retaliatory killings. The Joint
Chiefs of Staff’s sarcastic response: “Is it Hutu and Tutsi or Tutu and
Hutusi?”
Canadian Gen. Dallaire’s recent book, Shake Hands with the Devil”
(Carroll & Graf publishers, 2004), is his personal account of the
genocide. He writes that a highly placed informant told his UN team prior
to the slaughter that the Hutu youth militia were being trained and armed
by ex-Army officers and instructed
to compile lists of Tutsis living in their neighborhoods.
Dallaire sent a cable to the United Nations Department of
Peacekeeping Operations notifying them of his intent to raid one of the
weapons caches of the militia as a “deterrent” operation, but New York instructed
him to cancel the operation. “At the time,” he writes (this was soon after
the defeat and humiliation of U.S. troops in Somalia), “there was simply no
appetite for any operation that might lead to ‘friendly’ casualties.”
In the film, Rusesabagina, his wife, and loyal hotel staff listen to
a radio broadcast of an authentic official meeting between fumbling U.S. representatives
tap-dancing around the decision whether or not to
label the Rwandan massacre “genocide,” in indecisive, robot-like
voices. After several minutes, he shuts off the radio in disgust.
In July, the violence suddenly stops as the Hutu forces are thrown
back by RFP troops. The final scenes of Rusesabagina and his family leaving
a relocation
camp with others on a UN bus comes as a welcome relief; some children
are reunited with parents and missing family members are located.
Now Paul and his family live in France with their niece and nephew,
whose parents (his wife’s sister and brother-in-law) were never found.
“Hotel Rwanda” is a contender for an Academy Award in three
categories. Unfortunately, the film is showing in very few theaters compared
to the other major films of the season.
FACTS ABOUT
RWANDA
Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa,
with about 8 million people in a territory about the size of Maryland. It
is one of the poorest countries in the world, with about 90 percent of the population
engaged in (mainly subsistence) agriculture.
Though temperate and fertile, the country has few mineral
resources and minimal industry. Primary foreign exchange earners are coffee
and tea. The 1994 genocide decimated Rwanda’s fragile economic base, severely
impoverished the population, particularly women, and eroded the country’s
ability to attract private and external investment. The land faces environmental
degradation through overgrazing, deforestation, and poaching of endangered
animals.
The infant mortality rate is over 10 percent (101.68 deaths
per 1000 live births. The average life expectancy is 39.18 years. The death
rate has been made worse in recent years by AIDS (some 250,000 people are
infected with HIV).
Fighting between Tutsi, Hutu, and other ethnic groups—and
associated government and rebel armies—continues in the entire Great Lakes
region of
Africa.
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