Cinema & Citizenship: "Shooting Dogs" on the Rwandan genocide

“Shooting Dogs” is a film dealing with the Rwandan genocide of 1994. It was shot in Rwanda, directed by Michael Caton-Jones and starring British actors John Hurt and Hugh Dancy, playing a Catholic priest and a teacher respectively, caught up in the genocide. The film portrays the incidents which took place during six days in April 1994 at Kigali‘s Ecole Technique Officielle, run by priests and where Belgian U.N. troops were located. The film is based on real events and was filmed at the actual location where the story took place, involving a number of genocide survivors as its cast & crew members.

When tension between Tutsis and Hutu escalated into genocide, the school became a safe haven for Europeans and Tutsis, under the protectorate of the UN. At least 2,500 Tutsis took refuge there during the initial days of the genocide. But when belgian UN soldiers pulled out, abandoning the Rwandans to their fate, Hutu militias quickly overran the school and within hours massacred nearly all the men, women and children.

The second film dealing with the Rwandan genocide after “Hotel Rwanda”, "Shooting Dogs" is arguably more powerful and harder to watch than the Oscar-nominated “Hotel Rwanda”. John Hurt in particular has a great performance, as well as Hugh Dancy.

This committed film plays an important role in remembering Rwanda’s tragedy and in questioning the West's role in Africa, which is as vital for the future as understanding the past. The film provides a good example of the reluctance of western governments to be involved in conflicts that have no material impact on them as well as of the hypocrisy behind the action of western powers. It also shows the incompetence, weakness and inefficacity of the UN to deal with world conflicts. The question is: how can those people who oversaw this tragedy and took the wrong decisions sleep nowadays?

Notes on the Rwandan Genocide from wikipedia:
The Rwandan Genocide was the slaughter of an estimated 937,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, mostly carried out by two extremist Hutu militia groups, the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi, during a period of 100 days from April 6th through mid-July 1994.
For many, the Rwandan Genocide stands out as historically significant, not only because of the sheer number of people that were murdered in such a short period of time, but also because of the way many Western countries responded to the atrocities. Despite intelligence provided before the killing began, and international news media coverage reflecting the true scale of violence as the genocide unfolded, virtually all first-world countries declined to intervene.
The United Nations refused to authorize its peacekeeping operation in Rwanda at the time to take action to bring the killing to a halt. Despite numerous pre- and present-conflict warnings by Canadian Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire the UN peacekeepers on the ground were forbidden from engaging the militias or even discharging their weapons, unless fired upon. In the weeks prior to the attacks the UN ignored reports of Hutu militias amassing weapons and rejected plans for a pre-emptive interdiction.

The UN and member states appeared largely detached from the realities on the ground. In the midst of the crisis, Dallaire was instructed to have UNAMIR focus only on evacuating foreign nationals from Rwanda, and the change in orders even led Belgian peacekeepers to abandon a technical school filled with 2,000 refugees, while Hutu militants waited outside, drinking beer and chanting "Hutu Power." After the Belgians left, the militants entered the school and massacred those inside, including hundreds of children. Four days later the Security Council voted to reduce UNAMIR down to 260 men. But finally, on April 29, 1994, the UN conceded that "acts of genocide may have been committed." By that time, the Red Cross estimated that 500,000 Rwandans had been killed.

This failure to act became the focus of bitter recriminations towards individual policymakers specifically, such as Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh, (who was the administrative head of UNAMIR and former Cameroonian foreign minister), as well as the United Nations and countries such as France and the United States more generally and President Clinton specifically. Clinton was kept informed on a daily basis by his closest advisors and by the U.S. Embassy of Rwanda. President Clinton has said "It’s the biggest regret of my administration". He has visited Rwanda several times since leaving office. The genocide was brought to an end only when the Tutsi-dominated expatriate rebel movement known as the Rwandese Patriotic Front, led by Paul Kagame, overthrew the Hutu government and seized power. Trying to escape accountability, hundreds of thousands Hutu "genocidaires" and their accomplices fled into eastern Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The violence and its memory continue to affect the country and the region. Both the First and Second Congo Wars trace their origins to the genocide, and it continues to be a reference point for the Burundian Civil War.