UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA SARAWAK FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

SSA2024: FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATION SEMESTER 1 (2013/2014)

REFLECTION PAPER HOTEL RWANDA

PREPARED FOR MISS LEE PEI MEY

PREPARED BY SITI NUR ALLAIYAH BINTI ROSLAN

DUE DATE: 21st October 2013

Reflection paper : Hotel Rwanda Hotel Rwanda is a wonderful movie I think is very important to watch as a youth. What is amazing about this film is that you can feel the victim's pain and sorrows. The main character Paul, the manager of a luxury hotel also a Hutu, decides to risk his life for his Tutsi family and thousand other Tutsi people by protecting them in his hotel; Hotel Rwanda. The kind of Paul Rusesabagina who knows how things work in the real world, he uses his skills of bribery, flattery, apology and deception to save these lives that have come into his care. The movie is based on actual events in Rwanda's capital city of Kigali during the 1994 civil genocide. Here I will discuss about four things from this movie. 1. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ETHNIC HUTU AND TUTSI

Hutu and Tutsi were the ethnic groups in Rwanda. Hutu was the majority of Rwanda population and Tutsi was the minority one. They speak the same Bantu tongues as well as French, and generally practice Christianity and many geneticists have been hard-pressed to find marked ethnic differences between these two ethnics. Generally, Tutsi people are more powerful, wealthiest compared to Hutu people. That is the Rwanda civil conflict occurred. This civil conflict gave bad consequences towards the people and the Rwanda economic and also politic. According to Billy B., 2013,

This horrifying event affected mainly agriculture, the main occupation of the population, as civil strife heightened in the middle of the growing season. NGOs estimated that the overall loss of harvesting during the period of the Genocide was as high as 60%. Rwanda, commonly referred to as the land of a thousand hills, is populated by three ethnic groups 84% Hutu, 15% Tutsi and 1% Twa. (Billy B., 2013)

Based on the above citation, we can see that 84 percent of the population is from Hutu ethnic while only 15 percent is from Tutsi and another 1 percent from Twa ethnic. Hutu was the majority, Tutsi and Twa was a minority.

There are some differences between Hutu and Tutsi people. I will differentiate it in the table below: HUTU From Chad Black, darker than Tutsi Not sharp as Tutsi Lowest from Tutsi No wealth, just worker for landowner ASPECTS Origin Skin colour Nose shape Height Social status TUTSI From Ethiopia More brighter than Hutu More sharp More taller Have greater wealth and social status, landowner

2. FACTORS OR CAUSES TO THE CONFLICTS Besides each and every conflict, there must have a factor or causes to those conflicts. In this issue, there are several conflicts that led to the Rwanda civil conflict. In Hotel Rwanda movie, we can see that media was playing its important role in order to spread the message toward the Hutus people. The media was cunning to drive the Hutus mad and enraged by broadcasting the message through radios. The medias target was mostly to the uneducated people who could be easily enraged by their emotions. If they were educated enough (like the hotel manager, Paul, who saved a lot of Hutus and Tutsis), they would not go around in a killing their Tutsi friends/neighbours and let their emotions control them. Without media such as radio

in this context, I think the news of destroy Tutsi people will not been spread. That is why it is important for us to understand the cause of this horrible event and to acknowledge it. Generally, the Hutu-Tutsi contention stems from class warfare, with the Tutsis perceived to have greater wealth and social status (as well as favoring cattle ranching over what is seen as the lower-class farming of the Hutus). The Tutsi was the minority, but they get special right to have greater wealth and social status compared to Hutus. In this movie, it shows that Hutus people was angry with Tutsi because they said that, Tutsi was collaborators for Belgian colonists, Tutsi stole Hutus lands

3. HOW GENOCIDE WAS ABOLISHED In this movie, we can see that United Nation said that, We are peacekeeping, not a peacemakers. And at the end, the UN was leaving the Rwanda without settled the conflict in Rwanda. In this movie also, we can see that UN bring back all their people (white people) and all the black people without passport was leaved in Rwanda. So, who settled the Rwanda civil conflict? The Rwanda Genocide ended only when the RPF took over the country. The RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) were a trained military group consisting of Tutsis who had been exiled in earlier years, many of whom lived in Uganda. The RPF were able to enter Rwanda and slowly take over the country. When the RPF had full control, they did the genocide stop.

4. MY OWN OPINION

I think this ethnic conflict is mainly influenced by media. The media gives such information to create huge misunderstanding between two parties (Hutus and Tutsi). As people are brainwashed by the media, they resort to violence to express their feelings of anger, envy and hatred towards another group of people. Besides that, I had a further understanding of the effects of internal conflict in countries. The effects were dreadful and innocent people were killed, wounded and psychologically traumatized because of the violence. We only need something or someone to trigger it and in the case of Rwanda, it only took one man, the media (radio broadcast) to trigger the Hutus to go on a killing spree. It was really sad that innocent people were involved and even children were horrendously killed. I hope that whatever happened to Rwanda will not happen ever again, be it on Rwanda on other parts of the world. To avoid this kind of conflicts, I think we should learn to be tolerant towards others and try to understand each other without letting our emotions take over our sound minds.