Hotel Rwanda

I decided to surf the internet in search of inspiration, and I found it on the mediate.com website. Robert Benjamin’s article “Hotel Rwanda and the Guerrilla Negotiator” definitely caught my eye…particularly since I had checked the DVD out from the library last Friday but hadn’t yet watched it. Benjamin’s article piqued my interest enough to do some additional research on Rwanda, and passion was born.

While a colony of Belgium, Rwanda was separated into two tribal groups which many say was based on physical characteristics such as the wideness of the nose: the common Tutsi (majority), and the upper-class Hutu (minority). For many years, the Tutsis were powerful and mistreated the Hutus. In 1962, Rwanda gained its independence from Belgium, the power shifted to the Hutus, many of whom wanted to exact their revenge on the enemy Tutsis.

In 1993, Canadian General Romeo Dallaire was put in charge of the United Nations Mission to Rwanda to facilitate implementation of the Arusha peace accords after they were signed by the Hutus and the Tutsis. That mission was derailed when the Hutu president’s plane was shot down by Tutsi rebels. The president’s assassination was the precipitating event of what would become known as the genocide in Rwanda.

“When people