Blood Brothers

The audience at the Fine Arts Auditorium at Niagara County Community College was finishing up one of its several standing ovations for Paul Rusesabagina, the Rwandan hotel manager and subject of the Academy Award-nominated "Hotel Rwanda" who saved over 1,200 Tutsi tribe members in the 1994 Rwanda genocide, and he looked emotionally drained.

I guess that happens when you retell the story of an atrocity ignored by Western nations, an ignorance made even more heinous by the fact that you know that many of your almost murdered countrymen could've been saved by the lifting of a Washington or London telephone.

"We saw the whole world closing their eyes and their ears, turning their backs and abandoning us, like orphans in the jungle," Rusesabagina said when speaking of the United Nations troops pulling out of Rwanda after 10 Belgian soldiers were killed.

It would be simple to talk about the fact that the world needs a film to alert it to active genocide, but there is a larger issue at stake here. For every Rusesabagina, who exhausted the funding of an entire high-society Rwanda hotel, as well as his influential contacts, to bargain for the lives of the refugees he housed, there is a courageous man or woman chopped up by a machete or raped in front of their children.

Sound graphic? Well, get used to it, partner, because this is what Africa is experiencing on an almost continent-wide basis, according to Rusesabagina. These are real patriots, who love their homelands, being murdered or sent into exile.

"Africa is a forgotten continent where human life has no meaning," Rusesabagina said during his speech. "The genocide left behind half a million orphans. There are many woman raped, many with AIDS, who can't tell their children who their father is."

After Rusesabagina's speech, as he walked to film a segment for NCCC's television station, he spoke with passion about how he loves Africa, how he could never leave even after he attended school in many other countries.

"If Rwanda had peace today, I would be on the first flight home," he told me.

There is a scene in "Hotel Rwanda" where the cameraman played by Joaquin Phoenix has just returned from outside the hotel walls with graphic footage of Hutu militia members murdering Tutsi tribe members in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina, played by Don Cheadle, says to Phoenix, "Surely once the American people see this on the news, they will help."

Phoenix frowns, looks him in the eyes and says, "Paul, they'll look up, say 'God, that's awful,' and go back to eating their dinner."

I think, as a people, we have a tendency to assume America must be the most patriotic place on Earth. Equal parts car magnets and protest signs, we yield some sort of love for equality that rings true louder than a man in the streets of Darfur or a woman searching for food in the Congo.

That simply is not true.

It dawned on me as I walked back to my car to drive back to work that we can whisper or scream the words "global community" as loud as we want, but we can't expect to get this done by protesting once a year, or writing a letter when Kathie Lee Gifford sends the wrong memo.

Do you know why writing petitions and letters doesn't work? I'm willing to bet it's because we don't follow up. We have our meetings, yell and scream about what we can do, and then we sit back down, have a beer and wait for the next scandal.

Do you know that our United States of America is legally bound by international law to intercede in any genocide, and that's one of the main reasons that both the United Nations and George Bush hesitate to call the genocide in both the Congo and Sudan genocide. This isn't liberal talk either, because in 1994, Bill Clinton constantly referred to the Rwandan "tragedy" while he, most likely, sat in his room cowering at the intelligence in front of him.

Maybe that's why Rusesabagina calls Clinton's apology "just words," or maybe it's because he's a little bitter that he experienced driving a van over thousands of his dead countrymen in the middle of the night. Better yet, maybe it's because today, right now, we're sitting idly by, watching a film on something so horrendous, we'd die rather than hear of it happening again. And it's happening again.

"We need to do something about this now, so there isn't a 'Hotel Sudan,' " said Rusesabagina, who also said that the movie is 90 percent accurate.

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I'm asking you to take one of two small steps:

1) Hit up the Internet and do a Google search for "Darfur."

2) Go to the North Park Dipson and see "Hotel Rwanda."

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There are films that make you cry from laughter, cry from loneliness and cry from sadness.

Then there are films that make you weep.

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For more information, feel free to e-mail the writer at nmendola@acsu.buffalo.edu.