The title of this post I think accurately represents the question that I ask every time I think about what happened in Rawanda in 1994. Right now I am watching a movie entitled Shake Hands with the Devil. As I am watching it I remember all the frustration I felt when I first watched a documentary by the same name. It was then that I saw the truth about what happened in Rawanda. I know what I am saying may be old news to people but I hope if someone doesn’t know the truth they will read this and seek it out. The truth is very simple. What happened in Rawanda is the fault of Western societies. I mean what caused it was all the experiments done on the Rawandan people by the colonial power that occupied the country. This is what separated them in the the Hutu and Tutsi groups that fuelled the genocide. The UN Peacekeeping force that was sent there was led by Canadian General Romeo Dallaire. What he had to endure was horrific and yet he stayed to protect the innocent. In the face of a world that didn’t want to see what was happening and even when told refused to provide him the support he needed to stop what was happening even when countries such as the USA and European nations had the forces and resources to do it. So ultimately you know what the cause of the Rawandan genocide was. It was the failure to act of Western societies. The death toll was between 800,000 and 1,000,000 people but with the right support that could have been a lot less. That is support that countries had but refused to provide. Even when countries like France and Belgium sent in troops just to rescue people from their own countries and seeing what was going on.
So I say this if you don’t already know this the Rawandan genocide is one that is our fault because it was the UN who sent these people in there and even when they reported back what was going on all they were told was that regardless of what was going on they were not to use forces only in self-defence even if doing so could save innocent lives. We the western countries of this world tied the hands of the UN forces there behind their back so they couldn’t do anything to stop what was going on. So we are to blame regardless of what anyone says or will admit to.
Now that I have that rant over with I can get back to what I was talking about before in my next post and I hope this got you thinking about our place in the world as both Christians and just being human in general.
Tags: death, destruction, Genocide, Rawanda
