Inside the Hotel Rwanda

The backdrop for the story is the Hotel Des Milles Collines (which shares its name with the nickname for Kigali, town of the thousand hills, as well as the virulent propagandist pro-Hutu Power radio station RTLMC – Radio Television Libre Mille Collines.)

There Paul Rusesabagina hides his Tutsi wife, their children and 800 refugees. He had to produce a fax from Belgian hotel management in Brussels to exert his authority among reluctant staff as the 100 day extermination campaign goes on outside the precariously protected walls of the hotel grounds.

At one point in the film, Rwandan army personnel arrive to demand the refugees. Rusesabagina rings up the boss of Sabena to tell him they will all be killed. The Sabena boss wants to know who is really pulling the strings. Rusesabagina thinks for a moment and then tells him that the French are arming the Hutus.

The Sabena honcho (Jean Reno in a cameo) pulls strings with the French government to get the potential killers to withdraw – for now. Luckily for the refugees, fear of European retribution is a strong motivating force.

In another episode, he confronts a Hutu general (Bizimungu) and tells him point blank that genocide investigators will come and they look for him because of "his two general’s stars". He persuades Bizimungu the general needs him alive in order to testify on his behalf.

This is Rusesabagina’s escape route. A UN delegation comes to the hotel to help the refugees flee to the airport. The refugees had alerted their friends and relatives abroad and many now had foreign passports and visas for international travel.

However news of the delegation’s departure from the hotel is leaked to the hate radio station RTLM. They in turn stir up the militia Interihamwe (Rwandan for ‘those who attack together’) to launch an ambush. This happened frequently during the genocide.

The UN managed to defuse the ambush. Finally the convoy arrived at the front line of the war where the oppositionist RPF (Rwanda Patriotic Front) kill the militia men and the refugees are ‘safe’ in rebel controlled territory.

The real-life Rusesabagina and family fled to Brussels where they still live. The Tutsi-led rebels overthrew the government in August 1994 and the genocide was over. The French also hypocritically sent in a relief force at the end of the war called Operation Turquoise well after most of the victims were killed. Estimates vary between 500,000 and 800,000 dead, all within three short months.

Hymn of Zoroaster

Beerbarn burning, lunatic churning
Fearing Druj and drudgery
Thus faked Zarathustra
Master of the house
In carnation enduring
Mazdamatters to the Bactrians
Who is the creator of Good Disposition?
Dreams of well induced laborious awakenings
Before this new crisis, consider again
Choosing one from twins
Isha, Asha we each fall found
Into the mudpool of the mind mound
All are punished in the garden
Assembled by justice, fused and wizened
Common mortals with a case of the mentals
Living in the desired abode of praise
Sincerity the key to its mystic word
Doors to the never ever eternal
Wellwishing in ruling deeds of life
Cows decide between noblemen and nomads
Spreading the gospel of twofold prosperity
Those who choose, convict
Subliminal issues from impudent voices
Lain low by lady luck or the law
Watch out for the troubled maw of ignorance
Mumbling mystic words of Druj and jury
Raise up their first amendments
And vindicate their tongues at will
Imprecations are what concern you
And the smell of lasting darkness
So that you are disposed well
let power in speech be yours to tell

A Fishy Story called Rwanda

Woolly Days recently rewatched a DVD version of Irishman Terry George's film Hotel Rwanda about the genocide in that country in 1994.

Terry George is a confederate of Jim Sheridan and he was interned in the seventies for links to Sinn Fein.

His movie invoked thoughts of the Holocaust and how the vast majority of ‘ordinary decent Germans’ could not or would not notice what terrors were going on around them.

There was an uneasy feeling that not only was it possible then, that it was possible still and that Rwanda was the modern world’s closest resemblance to the WW2 genocide.

Nothing I saw in Hotel Rwanda undid that feeling.

Wisely it did not try to generalise. Instead, it took a specific set of circumstances and personalised the experience. Don Cheadle played the real life role of Paul Rusesabegina, the Rwandan under-manager (the over manager was a white Belgian) of the Sabena owned Hotel Des Milles Collines (Hotel of the thousand hills of Rwanda and pronounced 'Mickeleen') in the Rwanda capital Kigali.

It was a four star hotel and it was a centre of international activity in Rwanda. Rusesabegina's key role was to "maintain the dignity of the hotel at all times". He was also a Hutu married to a Tutsi.

The story starts in early 1994 just before the assassination of president Habyarimana. The president had gone to neighbouring Tanzania to sign a peace settlement with the rebel Tutsis. On return to Rwanda, his plane which also contained the Tutsi president of Burundi was shot down at he tried to land. All aboard were killed.

The genocide started within 24 hours. The Hutu militant radio (also invoking the thousand hills in its name – Radio Television Milles Collines) led the charge with a fierce volley of hate propaganda. "The Tutsis must have killed our president, we must get revenge," they said. It exhorted all Hutus to weed out "the cockroaches" – their unmistakable code for Tutsis.

The situation was not helped when European peacekeepers were withdrawn after 10 of its Belgian number were killed by Rwandan militia groups. Memories of the then-recent deaths of Americans in Somalia, and bodies dragged around the streets of Mogadishu by taxi, were still fresh. The Europeans withdrew leaving the bloody stage to be defended by a small 250-man UN international group (mostly Pakistani).

The Belgian manager of the hotel retreats to corporate HQ in Brussels and leaves Paul in charge. The building is quickly transformed into a refugee sanctuary protected by a thin veneer of light blue – the small remaining troops of UN Canadian general Romeo Dallaire (played with genuine exasperation by Nick Nolte) working miracles with his minor army. The precarious support of the Police is maintained by adroitly placed bribes – a skill Paul has in abundance as a hotel functionary.

The 800 Tutsi refugees in the hotel survive by marshalling their overseas relatives to gain visas and by Paul's ability to get support from the head of Sabena to get the French (who were arming the Rwandans) to intervene.

All around them, the massacres take place. Between half a million and eight hundred thousand (no one is really sure) Tutsis died in three months. The world did nothing.

There are chilling resemblances to the current situation in Darfur, equally unloved and neglected by the West. The wheels of genocide turn again.

Terry George has done the world a great service with this noble and heartfelt work.

The real Paul Rusesabegina emigrated with his wife and family and is now living in Belgium, Rwanda's former colonial master.