African Wind
Chapter7
Rwanda Film Festival_vol.2
In the previous Africa no Kaze (Chapter6), I reviewed a film by Eric Kabera entitled “Keepers of Memories”. Continuing from the previous Africa No Kaze, I would like to review another film from the Rwanda Film Festival. This time I will review the film by Raoul Peck entitled “Sometime in April”. Raoul Peck is a Haitian African film director and “Sometime in April” will be shown at Uplink in Shibuya during the Rwanda Film Festival. I highly recommend seeing this film if any of you have a chance to see it.
*The screening was finished
Sometime in April
The massacre in Rwanda in 1994 started with the chase and the attack of the airplane, which was carrying the president of Rwanda (Hutu tribe) and the president of Brandi (Hutu tribe). When the Hutu tribe’s broadcasting company reported this incident they added the evoking message that the choice was either kill or be killed. This broadcasting was the true beginning of the massacre that incited the genocide. In Africa radio is the main source of information and it has tremendous influence on the general public. Television is still considered as a luxurious item to own and only the wealthy people have televisions. It is the hot item to own especially during the World Cup games. Radio is the essential item for the majority of household and people depend on the radio to get the news and information. And in this case, radio was used to cause one of the worst tragedies in the history.
The story depicts a tragedy of the family of a Hutu radio DJ, his brother who is a Hutu policeman, the policeman’s wife who is a Tutsi, and their children who are half Hutu and half Tutsi. Before the genocide it was common for a Hutu and a Tutsi to marry. However a small group of Hutu army spread the idea of ethnic cleansing against Tutsi using the attack of the airplane with the presidents on it. The ethnic cleansing meant that everyone who don’t have a Hutu identification, including everyone who protected Tutsis, were the target of killing; even husbands and wives were killing each other to stay alive. In the film on the night the massacre started, white neighbors took the wife and the children in their home to protect them. The village was filled with screaming voices and sound of guns on that night. It was the beginning of the genocide. Everyone who didn’t have the Hutu identification was killed without mercy. There are no words to describe the cruelness of the massacre. It looked as if the killers were enjoying the murder with their bloody axes. The film clearly shows how powerful and scary it is to control the mass psychology and how easy to use it against humanity. It also shows how United Nations and the developed countries abandoned the Tutsi people and helped only the white people relocate to safety. At the root of the ethnic conflicts is the discontinuation of a DNA of a specific tribe. This idea justifies the killing of women and children, as the purpose of the killing is to erase the existence of a tribe. I heard a story of a family of 8, a Hutu father with a Tutsi mother with 6 children between them. The father asked the mother to choose 3 children to take with her to escape, and then the father killed the mother and the 3 children that she had chosen in front of the 3 children who were left with the father. As a result of this all 3 children who witnessed the cruelness of their own father suffered from tremendous degree of psychological trauma. In the film, the father helps the mother and children to escape, but in reality most of cases resulted in a tragedy. Another thing that I would like to point out about the film is the depiction of mass murders that shows up repeatedly throughout the movie. While watching the film I remembered one unforgettable story about mass murdering that actually took place in Rwanda. I would like to share that story with you all. One night someone announced that there would be a massive attack from Hutu, and all of Tutsis should go to the church to hide. Frightened Tutsi villagers gathered in a church and the church was packed with Tutsi people. Then someone locked the door from outside and set a fire on the church. Several hundred Tutsi villagers were trap inside the church, suffered and died. Hundreds of remains are left at the site even now. In the film you will see many violent and almost grotesque scenes that will make you want to cover your eyes.
yuminaga0363But how realistic the film seems to be we must remember that it is only a reflection of what the real happened. We must remember that in the reality there was real blood and real death. The film evokes a chain of thoughts of how it really was to experience the genocide, what was going on in the minds of the people of Rwanda, what the blood and ethnic groups really mean.
Media
The other thing that shook me after watching the film was how powerful the media is as a method to brainwash the general public. Television is on many of my African friend’s wish list and I feel uneasy about it. I was born in Japan and I have grown up watching television. Now I work in the mass media industry and yet I can’t endorse the idea of having television in every African household. I don’t think there is alternative source of information in Africa and the people won’t have any way to confirm the credibility of the shows and news that they see on television. I am afraid that the general public will be guided by the wrong information and it could disturb the society as a whole. As a fact the genocide was a good example of mass media being used as a tool to drive the mass murder. It is not only in Africa that mass media is used to control the general public. It also happens in the developed countries. A group of people who has the power to control the mass media gets to control the information. The big problem of the mass media is that the information goes only in one way, from the transmitter to the receiver. The people in the mass media industry know the power to control information and they use it to fit to their desire. They use a charismatic person to dispatch information to make the information seem to be authoritative on the surface. On the receiving end, people are likely to believe what they see on the television just because it seems right. Of course there are many journalists and reporters that are doing excellent job of reporting the truth and evaluating information, but sadly enough they are not necessarily the majority. I got side tracked away from the film but I wanted to make a point that mass media and wrong information could lead to a horrified event like the genocide. I fully understand that the developing counties have many issues to solve but I wanted to make it clear that each individual should search for the truth despite of what is on television.
The role of the developed nations
I often wonder what the developed nations did to help solve the problem of the genocide in 1994. In my opinion they only wasted the lives that they could have saved. Many of the politicians were aware of what was going on in Rwanda and pretended that they didn’t know. The developed nations started to offer help when PRF took control of the government and the Hutus fled out of Rwanda seeking refugee camps in fear of revenge from Tutsis. This is when Japanese news media started to air the news about the genocide. The unforgettable scene of huge refugee camps and fleeing people of Rwanda was the Hutus who committed the mass murder, not the Tutsis that lost nearly 1,000,000 of its people, who were the real victims of the genocide. The fleeing people that we saw on the television included the commanding officers and many of the top officials of the Hutu army, along with many women and children. The genocide could have prevented, or at least minimized the tragedy if the developed nations intervened earlier. I understand that even the United Nations couldn’t obtain enough support from the developed nations for the intervention. As a member of the developed nations, including Japan, we have to face the consequences and help rebuild the peace in Rwanda.
In addition as I mentioned in the previous Africa No Kaze, Japanese news media didn't pick up on the genocide in Rwanda for a long time. Considering the fact that 1,000,000 lives were lost in 100 days, why Japanese news media didn’t pay attention is beyond my understanding.If the Japanese media had started broadcasting and reporting what was going on in Rwanda earlier, there would have been strong supports sand solid interests among the Japanese general public, which might have been able to push the government to expeditethe process to intervene or send help. In a democratic nation it should be the people who drive the government.And the role of mass media should be to provide the information. To better or worse the mass media industry has to expand their vision and exend the coverage instead of creating shows that help boost the rating. Country like Japan where it is surrounded by the ocean, if there is no efficient amount of information about the rest of the world, it is so easy to be isolated from the rest of the world.
Note
There are 53 countries in Africa, however it was the Western countries who drew those borders. Originally Africa was consisted of 5,000 to 6,000 ethnic groups, each with its own language and culture.Before the colonization by the Western countries started all the ethnic groups co-existed in peace in Africa. It has been only 50 years or so since many of the African countries became independent. African countries need our help to establish safe and glorious societies. The genocide in Rwanda should never be repeated but at the same time we learned many valuable lessons from it. This year I decided to visit Rwanda. 3 years has past since the genocide and I don’t know what to expect of Rwanda.I hope to see many smiles there.
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