Hotel Rwanda
26th May 2014
Mark Stein, in addition to being a brilliant political commentator, also reviews movies.
Twenty years ago, the Rwandan genocide was, machete-wise, in full swing: They were about halfway through their seven-figure mass murder. There being no hashtags in those days, President Clinton, the Pain-Feeler-in-Chief, had to slough off the victims with a rather brusquer soundbite nixing international intervention: “The UN has to learn how to say no.” And so 20 per cent of the population of Rwanda was slaughtered, a number so huge that the world chose to hold it at a big, woozy, blurry distance. To mark the tenth anniversary, the editors of the Economist asked, ‘How many people can name any of the perpetrators?’ I’d say it’s more basic than that. How many could tell you whether it was the Hutu killing the Tutsi or the Tutsi killing the Hutu? C’mon, take a guess, without looking it up.