Hotel Rwanda: Conscience Put on Trial

It seems like ages ago when I first heard of the film, while, in fact, it was released as late as in 2005. Perhaps it is what the title conveys that made think so: Rwanda—Africa, which to me, I am ashamed to confess, is almost the equivalent of backwardness; Rwanda—Genocide, which took place roughly a quarter century ago. However, the real reason, I figure, lies in the general aloofness to the outside which characterizes today’s world.

Totally by chance, I ran into Hotel Rwanda online, and downloaded it, and watched it. And…I was shocked. Before, I only had the faintest idea that this film has something to do the 1994 genocide, but never knew exactly. Now it is completely verified.

By all standards, the plotline seems simple: The manager of a four-star hotel in Kigali (capital of Rwanda) by the name of Paul Rusesabagina sheltered over 1000 Hutu and Tutsi refugees during the 1994 massacre. It is the kind of film that you can predict the ending almost right from the beginning. But it is far from that simple. Unlike those films with a predictable outcome, you are into this one from the very start. You feel the same horrors, pains and joys—if you can call their final escape as joy—together with the characters as the drama unfolds itself.

Twice during the film, I erupted into tears. When the refugees welcomed the French troops like saviors, but only to find out they were only escorting the White people out of Rwanda, I was devastated. “Abandon” is the only word I could possibly think of. Like trapped ants, these poor people are left there, waiting to be trampled. The cruelest thing in the world is not hopelessness. It is when your last straw of hope is thrashed. Fortunately, they did not lose faith in themselves. When they finally made it to safety, I could not hold myself anymore.

More than evoking cheap tears, Hotel Rwanda is also a sitting tribunal without a judge, grilling every single audience about their conscience. Why did we, as human beings, fail to prevent such atrocities from happening in the first place? Why did we fail again, when we knew of the carnage, to intervene to salvage those innocent lives? Where were those high-minded, moralistic and omnipresent Western crusaders, who had made Africa what it is today? And where were we, seemingly as innocent as those slaughtered? The British photographer in the film had a point when Paul held high hopes of Western intervention, “When they see the footage [of the massacre], they will exclaim ‘Oh My God! How terrible!’ Then they will just sit down as usual and have their dinner.” The Canadian colonel made it even more clear, and starker, when he shouted ironically to Paul, after learning the French troops would only pick up the White people, “You are not worth a vote. You are blacks. They treat you as dung. You are not even Negroes, YOU ARE ONLY AFRICAN!” Yes. Why care about Rwanda when it has no impact on my re-election? Why bother about a place which I haven’t heard of? Why sacrifice our troops because of their quarrels? Why intervene when we scholars and foreign policy analysts alike have told you that it is against the national interests?...... Thus run the countless counterarguments. It certainly saddens me when I am faced with such a downpour of forceful rhetorical statements. It pains me excruciatingly when those same politicians boasting of moral integrity, those same fellow citizens speaking of compassion, and those same scholars talking of world peace now turn a blind eye to the sufferings of those people, simply because their skin is of a different color, their language is of a different tone, and their country is in a different geographical location.

What is truely terrifying is not hypocricy, not apathy, not even cynicism, it is oblivion. It is astonishing to think that a collective crime committed on such a scale only 13 years ago has lapsed into the dustbin of history, let alone the fact that it does not even enter into the history proper but languishing in a handful of insignificant footnotes. It is more appalling to see how people these days take this issue so casually as if a fly has been just flapped.

Well, well, well…Luckily, we still have Paul, the Canadian colonel and tens of thousands of nameless heroes out there holding out for our conscience, and the director, Terry George, who brought about this film as a reminder. As Milan Kundera famously observed, memory is always prone to oblivion. And the film is just a timely sting. A sting in our consciousness. A sting in our conscience. A sting for us to remember. A sting that I hope would perpetuate itself.

P.S: This piece was completed on 10/10/2007, and was originally posted on my Myspace blog.