Rwanda Reflection

The Rwandan Genocide was the mass execution of the Tutsi by the Hutu. It has claimed an estimated 500,000 or more lives and is remembered by many as one of the worst atrocities of human existence. In class, we were assigned to watch two forms of information, a speech from a survivor and a film documenting the horrors of the genocide called Hotel Rwanda. Both had noticeable minor differences but the main morals of the two stories stayed the same. Both the speaker and the film greatly described the hatred between the two groups, a factor that would later cause one of the most catastrophic genocides in modern history. My main take away from the two stories is that hatred breeds from fear and with the right mix of confusion and deliberate misinformation, atrocities like this are not something of only foreign nature. The speech and film have greatly changed my opinion on identity and love and I have learned to not spot differences but rather similarities.