news...from over a decade ago.

[rarr_raptor]

a short excerpt from  We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch:
(a journalist's book about the GENOCIDE that took place in Rwanda only a little over a decade ago)

"Take the best estimate: eight hundred thousand killed in a hundred

Comments

[_crad_]

yes.

Yes.

& YES.

[kurosh]

why would it bother you? you never knew it happened. it doesn't affect you.

would you rather have not known about it?

[rarr_raptor]

that's just it, it doesn't affect me or you at all.

does that me we shouldn't care, shouldn't even have known about it?

the easy answer is yes, but i don't feel that way. at least i know.

[kurosh]

that's odd. that's not what you say about analagous subjects.

[rarr_raptor]

yes hun, but MASS GENOCIDE is a lot different from those subjects.

[colrgrd05]

we learned about that in my justice class. its horrible. i can't believe everything that went on there and no one did anything abou it

[rarr_raptor]

no one cared enough to do anything.

no one cared enough to teach it to us until 11 years later.

[colrgrd05]

i know its horrible. i remember kinda hearing about it but not really. i can't believe no one cared enough to stop them. and Bill Clinton went to "apologize" he didn't really even apologize for not helping, and he only said in rwanda for about 2 hours i think was the time

[laurenface21]

yea because it was in africa. when has our government ever cared about africa? what do they have that we want? diamonds.. and... oh. that's it.
watch hotel rwanda. that movie is very.... extreme. and not in a good way.

[rarr_raptor]

we all know you hate the american government, it's clear. but although our government didn't help, postponed votes, and "reinterpreted" the Genocide Convention, the French were supplying arms and the belgiums helped heighten the discrimination, and other nations ignored it too.

but stop complaining about the government for a second... that's not what i'm saying.

we've been taught about the holocaust since we were kids. but rwanda is never mentioned. close to A MILLION people died: most by drunken militia/”extremists,” some by people they trusted--teachers, friends, neighbors, some PREISTS were have said to have killed--most by MACHETE. hacked to death. a mass, clear-cut GENOCIDE. it disturbs me that while most of the world's governments didn't care, most of us don't even know it happened.

ps hotel rwanda is loosely based off the book and his interviews.

[rarr_raptor]

of course, i'm not saying i'm disturbed that schools in particular don't teach it, just that i never knew.

i think people are too quick to react by blaming something. All i am saying is that this event was horrific, and i think it's upseting that more wide-spread attention isn't paid to things like this.