Kwtia

‘The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.’ E. Burke

Hotel Rwanda is one of those films that we need to take a look at as soon as we can...

"Hotel Rwanda is an act of memory against forgetting, a reminder to the world -- from presidents and policy makers to ordinary people in front of their TVs--that it turned away as 800,000 people were butchered, in plain sight, in 100 days. (There's a quiet but telling moment in the film where an American photojournalist, on viewing film footage of a massacre, sadly observes, " "people will see it, say 'Oh, that's awful,' and go back to their dinners." And so it proved.) And it's a summons to act now -- to give meaning to the words "Never again." " From Mother Jones magazine

If you want to learn more about what happened in Rwanda

• Read the book We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch (available in Kwt Bookshop)
• Take a look at PBS's extremely informative site about the Rwandan genocide: The Triumph of Evil
• Romeo Dallaire was the UN official who defied orders and decided to stay in Rwanda to help stop the violence..he has written Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda about witnessing the genocide.
• Visit the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
• Read THE RWANDA CRISIS by Gerard Prunier
• Watch "Forsaken Cries." Available from Amnesty USA, http://www.amnestyusa.org/. A documentary examining the genocide in Rwanda.

Never Again?

Right NOW: More than 1.6 million people – 80 percent of northern Uganda’s entire population – have been displaced and now live in squalid conditions.---16 million Congolese are going hungry, more than two million have been displaced by the war and in some parts of the country, two out of five children are dying in infancy. ---In Somalia: two million people displaced or killed since civil war erupted in 1990 and close to five million people estimated to be without access to clean water or health care

Heart of the Congo Is a documentary about the humanitarian efforts there...2.5 million people have died in the DR Congo in the past 3 YEARS-that's 2283 human beings A DAY! All while we are lucky enough to eat, relax, watch tv, shop, laugh with our families and enjoy our lives...

• Let's not forget that we are good at forgetting, so let's keep remembering and keep looking for ways to help and places to help..
• Ask: why do millions die in the Congo and yet no humanitarian Intervention takes place ? Why have hundreds of thousands been slaughtered and almost two million made refugees in Darfur while no one seriously intervenes to stop it? Why does the world not shine a light on this type of genocide/terrorism/murder? Why is the humanitarian crisis in these places not on our screens as often as places where it's in the interest of the big countries to intervene? These are invisible conflicts, suffering that is kept from the rest of the world, let's not ignore these people please.
• Amnesty and Oxfam have a campaign to Control Arms
• Support Women for Women International: They work in the Congo, Rwanda, Iraq and other conflict zones.(thank god Oprah finally did an episode about the DR Congo)
• Support Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam and Amnesty.
• DO NOT buy conflict diamonds. Learn how to avoid buying diamonds that came at the cost of people's lives.
• Learn more about conflicts in Africa.

Interview with Boutros Boutros Ghali:
TIME: What problems do we cause?
Boutros-Ghali: We say we have 16 members in the Security Council: the 15 members plus cnn. Long-term work doesn't interest you because the span of attention of the public is limited. Out of 20 peacekeeping operations, you are interested in one or two. Two years ago, it was Mogadishu. Now it is Sarajevo. Tomorrow it will be Haiti. And because of the limelight on one or two, I am not able to obtain the soldiers or the money or the attention for the 17 other operations. Nobody was taking care of what was going on in Rwanda. It was one of my personal greatest failures.