Hotel Rwanda

Wrote this for speech class and read it last week. Thought this might be a good place to share it.


Reflections on the movie Hotel Rwanda, a 2004 film depicting the genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the African country of Rwanda. Prior to the 1994 genocide, in the year 1959, the majority ethnic group, the Hutus, overthrew the ruling Tutsi king. Within the next several years, thousands of Tutsis were killed, and approximately 150,000 were forced into neighboring countries. Children of these exiles later formed a rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, and began a civil war in 1990. This war, along with several political and economic upheavals, heightened ethnic tensions—Hutu against Tutsi—and thus the genocide of a million Tutsis in three months. Hotel Rwanda is the true story of Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who found himself in the midst of the struggle against the Hutu militia, and housed over a thousand Tutsis refugees within his hotel.


Hotel Rwanda. For this tragedy in my lifetime that I was immune to; for the genocide that I was immune to; for the horror that escaped the hearts of people worldwide—I grieve. My body is tense with anxiety as I watch the screen. Watch the children dancing and singing an African song, innocent, yet targets because of their Tutsi heritage. Watch as Hutu soldiers beat men, women, and children, and kill them with machetes. “A machete is no way to die”. Why were these people abandoned? Why were they left without protection? Why do people hear of such things and continue about their daily lives, saying, “That’s horrible, and turning back to their dinner”? Was there no one willing to intervene?

We distance ourselves from tragedy and let such events go unprocessed. It is the only way to deal with them and not be moved. Yet, how can we ignore a road full of bodies as far as the eye can see; bodies on the road and in the ditches, bodies for miles and miles in all directions. Still, the attitude that there is nothing we can do plagues us. And I look to the gold cross Paul, the hotel manager, holds in his hand, the cross his wife wears around her neck. I wonder if he thinks, “My God, why have forsaken your people? Where are you, God?” because that is what I am thinking. Where was God when this killing of millions took place? Why did he let this happen? I would not have let it happen—if I had the power to stop it. Or would I? This is not the only genocide occurring in my lifetime. What am I doing about similar situations in the world today? There is civil war in the Congo, and the conflict of warring ethnic groups from Rwanda and other countries seeking refuge in the Congo; there is genocide in the Sudan in the country of Darfur. Am I, are we, yet standing by? Perhaps this is not about God’s failings to enter into the situations of suffering around the world. Perhaps it is our own failings.

23) Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.
24) See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Psalms 139:23-24

Friends, it is time to stop questioning God and wondering where God is when His people are suffering. It can only be assumed by his great love for all people, as shown through His Son Jesus Christ, that God is in the midst of the suffering. This is where we need to be as well. That we would be moved to action on their behalf—whether by donating supplies or funds to a trusted organization, writing letters to our government, organizing a trip to Africa, or by remaining conscious of the suffering and telling others about it, there is something that can, and needs to be done. We must not forsake our brothers and sisters.



Information concerning African countries found at CIA Factbook.