Emotions and the Human Condition-The Rwandan Genocide

After having watched the brief movie clip last week in class, I found myself in a somewhat troubled place. As a Peace and Conflict’s Major, I have been introduced to a myriad of videos and writings that illustrate the heinous atrocities humans can afflict on one another. With this said, the video clip presented in class depicted dead bodies on the road as well as a woman offering a detailed explanation of what happened to her family during the genocide. However, for some reason, I found myself somewhat desensitized to the material being displayed. As a result, I decided to watch Hotel Rwanda to see how I would react to a major motion picture depicting the genocide. Subsequently, I found myself to be much more emotional after having watched Hotel Rwanda. The scene when Don Cheadle witnesses the countless numbers of bodies on the road left me speechless. It was at this point that I began to understand what the genocide truly was. It is unfathomable to rationalize the systematic nature of the genocide, and the emotional pains that Rwandans felt as the genocide transpired. After watching a movie such as Hotel Rwanda, it became clear that Hutu extremists/militants would use any means necessary to eradicate the Tutsi’s, or as they were called in the film, “cockroaches”. The Hutu extremists acted as if human emotion was completely stripped from their sense of being. This became explicit when they began targeting Tutsi children so that there would be no future generations of Tutsi within Rwanda. For anyone who has yet to see Hotel Rwanda, I strongly urge you to watch the film because it offers an additional perspective of the genocide as well as understanding how the international community failed to intervene in the conflict.