Hotel Rwanda Essay

The severity of this film in specific shows how there was no life to Rwanda after the genocide was over. Thousands of people died daily because of a simple social or economic divide that the Hutus took very seriously. The monstrous souls that the ‘rebel’ Hutus had, destroyed countless Tutsis and their lives. This specific portion of history is highly significant to warrant a film for many reasons. One is because it shows the vicious way people were living because of an economic divide that was created between them. Many people go through social or economic divides in their everyday lives that encounter them to live in an inhumane world. “Shake Hands with the Devil”, displays how simple conflicts can turn into murderous actions between people. There are many severe situations in the world that are currently happening or had already happened because of division of color, income, or social status. What makes this movie of the history of the Rwandan genocide different is that characters that play in it clarify how people are extremely selfish, helpless, or hopeless in the world we live in. In the movie, there are many situations when the peacekeepers or Dalliare is seeking help from external countries who refused to serve him with any sort of aid. Therefore,

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

What is genocide? Genocide is a deliberate and systematic attempt to destroy an ethnic, religious, racial, or national group. Two genocides that happened fairly recently are the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. The victims of the Rwandan genocide and the victims of the Holocaust experienced similar stages of polarization, preparation, extermination, classification, symbolization, and dehumanization and different stages of organization and denial.

It is known that after coming back from wars, the commonality would be that many become traumatized. For Leroy Sievers, the only war that ever gave him nightmares was the genocide of Rwanda. He describes his experience in great detail of how the entire area reeked of death and how a stranger died at his feet, the last thing he saw was his face. He explains how many, after watching Hotel Rwanda, were distraught, asking the questions of why no one did anything to stop it or why they had not heard about it before. His reply was merely that there was broadcasts that occurred that they had just not paid any attention to. Most of this article is describing the horrors that he witnessed in much detail. He witnesses people literally dropping dead.

The continent of Africa has been continually engaged in civil, tribal and cross national conflicts from colonial independence up until present day. What historians regard as the most ‘efficient genocide’ in history, occurred in a mere 100 days in the small central African country of Rwanda. The Hutus and the Tutsis, two ethnic groups within Rwanda, have been at continual unrest for the past half a century. During the 100 day massacre of 1994, a murder occurred every two seconds; resulting in 18% of the Tutsi population being killed. A decade after the war, in 2004, the film Hotel Rwanda was released. The film followed the story of a Hutu man; Paul Rusesabagina as he housed over 1200 Tutsi refugees in his hotel. The Hotel De Milles

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 1994, Rwanda was in its darkest days. 800,000 people died in a matter of 100 days. But it was all because of a simple separation between the Rwandans, the Hutu and the Tutsi. To understand the topic we must first look at the topic from the beginning. Who were the Hutu and the Tutsi?

In Hotel Rwanda, their are two cultures who do not getting along, the Hutu and Tutsi. The Hutu feel indignation towards the Tutsi because years ago they were given special privileges and power based on their skin tone, nose width, and height. The Hutu anger started to brew, and cause people to bring about the idea of riots. The Hutus then started a genocide against the Tutsis because of the special treatment they had been given years ago.

Imagine living a life of fear, turmoil, with death all around. Hearing gun shots being fired, death chants, machete use, dead bodies everywhere. Afraid to close your eyes at night to rest, yet more afraid to wake up in the morning. To sustain your life and the life of your loved ones you must hide out, kill others, watch your neighbors be killed at the hands of the enemy. Knowing if you are caught you could be forced to murder your own family, be raped, be held captive, be starved to death, and most likely be killed. In 1994, this was the life many faced in Rwanda. “Rwanda has become a synonym for one of the worst genocides of the 20th century (Lemarchand, (n.d.), p. 483).

A Genocide is the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially of those of an ethnic group or nation. There has been seven genocides, and the Rwanda genocide is no exception. Only a little less than a million people were killed, over a period of approximately 100 days (Singh 1). With the bad living conditions already in Rwanda, it is a place of poverty and discomfort for many people among other problems such as inequality. The genocide could have been prevented if Rwanda, and surrounding countries, had placed refugee camps near Rwanda for fleeing Tutsis, the United Nations stepping in sooner and educating the public on the genocide, and allowing the Hutus to have as much of a voice that the Tutsis had (before the genocide had started).

With all of the violence against the Tutsi and the Hutu looking like the bad guys, the Tutsi were the ones that had initiated the violence. “Violence and killings continued and then accelerated in 1993, when Tutsi army officers assassinated the Hutu president of Burundi, Melchior Ndadaye.” (Middleton). To begin there was violence against the Tutsi but, if they had wanted all of the violence to stop they should not have gone and killed the Hutu president. As the Tutsi started to flee they had came across the hotel paul was the manager at and had taken refuge, he had know very well what would happen if he was caught housing the Tutsi, but he had still taken the risk to save their

Maria Kizito and Hotel Rwanda are true accounts of two isolated events that took place in Rwanda during a genocide in 1994 where nearly one million innocent people lost their lives. Maria Kizito is a play that focuses mainly on the trial of a catholic nun, Maria Kizito, who was charged and found guilty of promoting and facilitating the murder of seven thousand refugees who sought shelter from Hutu extremist at a local convent (Kizito 178). Whereas Hotel Rwanda focuses on the life of Paul Rusesabagina, a Rwandan manager, and Hutu, at a Belgian-owned luxury hotel in Rwanda 's capital, who saved not only himself and his family but also 1,268 refugees from the same extremist. Despite their differences in location and characters, the play and the film, both develop narratives that tell the same story about how the genocide in Rwanda is a direct result of colonization, how the international community failed to intervene, and that a plane crash ignited in what was the worst genocide after the holocaust. Before analyzing how Maria Kizito and Hotel Rwanda depict Colonialism, it is important to first understand the history of Colonialism in Rwanda.

Paul was a Hutu manager for a luxury hotel in Rwanda, and he sheltered over 1,200 Tutsis in his hotel during the genocide. This included his own wife, and their children. Like previously stated Paul was married to a Tutsi woman named Tatiana Rusesabagina and they had four children who were also Tutsis. Tatiana and her children were specific targets in the brutal attacks because they were related to Paul, who was hiding and protecting over 1,200 Tutsis. Paul showed his sympathy towards the Tutsis multiple times during the film; the first example is when one of the Hutu soldiers was about to kill all of the Tutsis that Paul and his wife were hiding in their home, when Paul bribed the Hutu soldier to let them go free, when Paul could have left and reduce the risk of getting killed himself.

To start with, Rwanda is a very small country located near the center of Africa (“Rwandan Genocide<< World Without Genocide-Working to create a World Without Genocide”). It had a population of 7.7 million: 90% Hutu ethnic group and 9% Tutsis before the genocide began (“Rwandan Genocide<< World Without Genocide-Working to create a World Without Genocide”). The first tension was driven between the Hutus and the Tutsis when European colonists moved into Rwanda and chose the Tutsis for a group to be privileged and educated (“GENOCIDE- RWANDA”). Because of this, Hutus

The Rwandan genocide occurred in 1994 between the two prevalent ethnic groups in Rwanda, the Hutu and the Tutsi. Hotel Rwanda documents the plight of Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager, who opens his hotel as a shelter for the Tutsi people during the Rwandan genocide, saving thousands of lives in the processes. Through bribes Rusesabagina was able to keep thousands of Tutsi people from death. Like many other African states, Rwanda was colonized by a European superpower, Belgium. Therefore, many Rwandans blame Belgium for the division in the country because Belgium considered Tutsi to be more elegant; as a result Hutus were oppressed. After Rwanda