I feel like my whole life has been censored and controlled. I knew of things like the Jewish holocaust and the American civil war, but I wasn’t truly aware of the bloodshed and gore behind those events. Throughout my life, I never once heard of the Rwandan genocide and the horrors it contained. To see some of the images in the video made my perception of the world falter and have to reshape some of itself. I didn’t know such bad things could be done by good people. I wonder how they committed such awful acts. Were they just unable to think and were blindly following their companion’s orders? Or where they completely aware of the pain they were inflicting but couldn’t suppress their actions behind a wall of thoughts anymore.
One of the most disturbing images was a shot of video that depicted a line of bodies, shot bleeding and very dead, but still with their colorful cloths on, and various possessions and valuables in their hands. All the dead faces were hidden under cloths, or by arms thrown up to stop deadly bullets that were never slowed by things like flesh and bone. Among the group of people were several children, one with a doll in its hand. Beside the child with the doll was a scarf, covered in mud and dropped by some fleeing victim. The images haunted me and gave my nightmares, and my perception will never be as ignorant and innocent as before I saw the video. Rwanda experienced an awful genocide that should never have happened, and when it did, every measure possible should have been taken to stop it.
Before watching the documentary "Ghosts of Rwanda" I had no knowing of the terrors of the Rwandan genocide. It's shocking watching clips of piles of corpses scattered across the sides of the road. Just watching that documentary makes one think: How could something like this ever happen? I find it shocking most of all of how little other countries intervened to stop the killings. Yet the U.N. and the U.S. gave no support. After watching the documentary I realized how the United States could have helped out, even if it was sending supplies or providing soldiers to help protect innocent Tutsis, yet the U.S. did nothing. All genocides are truly terrible.
ReplyDeleteMegan! This was a really good representation of your feelings from Ghosts of Rwanda. I completely understand and agree with you. I felt the same way. It was really hard to see those devastating images and videos. The worst part was hearing the stories from those who were actually there. It was a shame that sufficient help was not provided. -Daniel
ReplyDelete