Comparing A Long Way Gone 'And Watching Hotel Rwanda'

The 2004 film, Hotel Rwanda, directed by Terry George, highlights the brutality of the Rwandan Genocide between the Hutu and the Tutsi peoples. The results of the conflict were the death of almost one million Rwandan citizens, mostly Tutsi. Initially, the conflict arose when Belgium internationals came into Rwanda and gave power to the Tutsi, who were lighter skinned and taller, which led to extremist Hutu groups to arise in response to this unfairness. Ultimately, this uprising and forming of the two distinct groups was heavily influenced by propaganda, political corruption, and groupthink, and all of which essentially resulted in the huge tragedy.

The first issue involves the conflict between the Hutus and the Tutsi people of Rwanda. Per the movie the Belgians created the two groups before leaving the country at the end of the colonization period. Catherine André also backs up this claim in her article as well. Thus, the two groups experienced different lifestyles. The Tutsi were the “chosen” people while the Hutu’s suffered.

In Hotel Rwanda there are two sides to the community. The Tutsi and the Hutu, a division made by Belgian colonizers. Apparently the lighter and taller Rwandans were treated better in the duration of the Belgians visit, these were the Tutsi. But after leaving, this conflict continued on for the rest 20th century and well into the 21st. But to some, the division is pointless, given that they were and will always will

Hotel Rwanda tackles a recent event in history where the Hutu extremists of Rwanda initiated a terrifying campaign of genocide, massacring approximately

The Hutu started to go door to door killing the Tutsi with machetes, cubs or any hand weapons they could get their hands on to because bullets were to expense for the Hutu to affored, about.com says (“Some of the victims were given the option of paying for a bullet so that they'd have a quicker death”). The reason why the Hutu would know who was a Tutsi was because they would look at their identity card that would have what they were, a Hutu, a Tutsi or a Twa. All the Tutsi men & children were killed as soon as they were found, but some of the women would be kept & tortured before being killed & in many causes they would be raped first then killed adding humiliation to the mix of all things. The killing lasted about 100 days or 4 months averaging about 800,000 Tutsi men & women died. The slaughter stop because the RPF came into play, the RPF or known as the Rwandan Patriotic Front is a trained military made up of Tutsi people that was made some years before. The RPF forced matter into their own hands & went into Rwanda to take over, they came out wining but at the same time the flet like if they “had lost because they have had wished to get here sooner than later” says a Tutsi

On the day of April 6th 1994, the mass murders sparked a ferocious wave of bloody reprisals as thousands of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered over the next three months, killing almost 10,000 people everyday. Hutu extremists were told to load up on weapons like knives, guns, axes, whatever they could find so they could kill tutsis. They could do whatever they wanted to the Tutsis. The Hutu government said “Spare no one, especially the babies.” The Hutus goal was to kill every Tutsi in Rwanda. As told by Border guards, people have been floating down the river in hundreds everyday for weeks. Many bodies had their hands tied behind their backs. They were either shot, hacked, clubbed, burned, or drowned.

In a report published by UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund) it states that there are around 300,000 child soldiers, participating in over 30 different conflicts worldwide. Of these 300,000, 120,000 are serving in different countries in Africa. One of the countries where this issue has been extremely prevalent is Sierra Leone, where child soldiers made up a significant part of the armed forces during its 11-year civil war, with 10,000 out of about 50,000 soldiers being children. Accounts of child soldiers in Sierra Leone have been made, with both the book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier and the movie Ezra telling the story of a Sierra Leonean child soldier. Even though both the book A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah and the movie Ezra by Newton Aduaka are important works, A Long Way Gone is more important to help people think critically and understand important aspects of the world around them.

Rwanda was left with a crisis amongst the children and people, leaving them with horrible memories. A lot of children have been orphaned too.

“The sweetly sickening odor of decomposing bodies hung over many parts of Rwanda in July 1994: . . . at Nyarubuye in eastern Rwanda, where the cadaver of a little girl, otherwise intact, had been flattened by passing vehicles to the thinness of cardboard in front of the church steps,” (Deforges 6). The normalcy of horrible images like this one had cast a depressing gloom over Rwanda during the genocide, a time when an extreme divide caused mass killings of Tutsi by the Hutu. Many tactics such as physical assault or hate propaganda are well known and often used during times of war. Sexual assault and rape, however, during times of war is an unspoken secret – it is well known that rape occurs within combat zones and occupied territories, but

Throughout the 1600s to the mid 1990s, the Tutsi tribe in Rwanda, and the Hutu tribe of Rwanda have always been arch enemies. Although the Hutus have had a prolonged hate for the Tutsi tribe, this hate was not physically expressed, until 1994. From April to July of 1994, over 80,000 Tutsi people were murdered and tortured for their African heritage. The Rwanda genocide is considered to be one of the worst massacres the world has ever seen since the Holocaust. This paper will touch a few things that occurred after the massacre, and will also answer the questions of why this massacre started, what occurred during this genocide. The Rwandan genocide was a massacre based off of discrimination and hatred for a specific tribal group. This

Rwanda was a small country in Africa that had two ethncitys occupying it. The superior ethncity. The Tutsi mistreated the Hutu. When the Hutu were repersented with the chance to retaliate they took it. For a while the Hutu and the Tutsi lived as equals, and lived peacfully. Until power fell into

In summary, Hotel Rwanda is about the mass genocide of the Tutsi ethnic group in Rwanda during the mid-90’s. It is estimated that nearly one million people were killed in the efforts of the Hutu people to completely eliminate the Tutsi population. The tension began because of the Belgium government colonizing Rwanda, and them putting the Tutsi people originally in charge. Later on the Hutu people took control of the government and were getting back at the Tutsis for the years of oppression. With rising tension, the Rwandan president, who was a Hutu, was going to sign a peace treaty to allow the two groups to live in harmony. However, he was assassinated by a “Tutsi rebel” which caused mass chaos, resulting in this mass genocide. A hotel, managed by Paul, who had great authority with the United Nations and the Rwandan Army, was able to protect 1,100 moderate Hutus and Tutsis from being killed by the Hutu rebels. Multiple times throughout the film the forces broken into the hotel complex and greatly threatened the life of the refugees. With the protection from the UN and bribery, Paul was able to protect the refugees and get the them to safely in Tanzania.

A group of Rwandan people known as the Hutu want to eliminate another Rwandan group, the Tutsi, and they get very close to succeeding. About one million Tutsi people were murdered in the Rwandan Genocide in a time span of 100 days. Hotel Rwanda is a movie about a hotel manger, Paul, that saves a thousand Tutsi people by keeping them in his hotel. He saves the refugees, mostly, by giving the Hutu rebels his money and alcohol in return for leaving the Tutsi people alone. The movie is trying to send the message that helping others is equally important as helping one’s family.

The movie starts with a radio announcer saying that Tutsis took Hutu land, and they are cockroaches and murderers. He states that Hutus are the majority, and that the infestation of Tutsi traitors and invaders will be squashed.

Beginning April of 2004, the Rwandan Hutu started mass murders of Tutsi. This genocide is believed to have spawned from the civil war that was taking place at that time. This civil war was based on issues over power and resentment between the Tutsi and the Hutu. (Rwanda, 2008) Eventually the war escalated to the point where the Hutu began genocide of the Tutsi and anybody who opposed the ideas of the Hutu. The killing of the Tutsis became so common—in a very short amount of time—that it was practically acceptable amongst the Rwandans. (Hintjens, 1999) This was a very brutal and gruesome genocide. In just five weeks, approximately half a million Tutsi and innocent civilians had been murdered. (Hintjens, 1999) This is an astounding number of people, especially because the Hutu murdered the Tutsi at knife point—usually with a machete. (Snow, 2008)