rwanda per 1 - needham.k12.ma.us

Rwanda:
The story you never
wanted to hear
“Rwanda will never ever leave me. It's in the pores of my body. My
soul is in those hills, my spirit is with the spirits of all those people who
were slaughtered and killed that I know of, and many that I didn't know. …
Fifty to sixty thousand people walking in the rain and the mud to escape
being killed, and seeing a person there beside the road dying. We saw lots
of them dying. And lots of those eyes still haunt me, angry eyes or innocent
eyes, no laughing eyes. But the worst eyes that haunt me are the eyes of
those people who were totally bewildered. They're looking at me with
my blue beret and they're saying, "What in the hell happened? We were
moving towards peace. You were there as the guarantor" -- their interpretation -- "of the mandate. How come I'm dying here?" Those eyes
dominated and they're absolutely right. How come I failed? How come
my mission failed? How come as the commander who has the total responsibility-- We learn that, it's ingrained in us, because when we take
responsibility it means the responsibility of life and death, of humans
that we love.” - Romeo Dallaire
Now Showing!
BY: Shannon Murphy, Andy Caccavaro, Lindsay
Irrera, Rachel Turk
CHARACTERS
Fidele Ingabire:
A 30 year old man by the name of Fidele
Ingabire was taken from his home in Nyamata, Rwanda in 1994. People were killed
starting on April 11th. Fidele was terrified
of being killed. One morning, Fidele witnessed gun shots and many fires in the
streets. Most people fled to the church but
Fidele ran to the tall grass of the valley.
His wife was murdered in the tall grass by
the Hutus, and so were six of his eight children. Because of the Hutus, much of Fideles
family was murdered and Fidele never got
to say good bye to them.
Muteteli Kirenga - 2 years old
Forced into “refuge” at a local pastor’s
house, Muteteli, her mother, and six other
women were hidden in a small bathroom.
The women were tall and sat with their
backs against the walls, while small Muteteli hid by their feet. Smaller girls were
pulled down on top of them in the claustrophobic space. For 91 days, they hid there
taking turns stretching and standing. Killers lurked just outside the window, so the
women couldn't often stand up or talk. One
day dozens of Hutus stormed the house,
threatened the pastor, discovered the
refugees and slaughtered them all. That
was the life young Muteteli knew.
CHARACTERS
Irene Umotoni:
Irene Umotoni’s family was slaughtered
by Hutu soldiers and militiamen in the parish of Nyarubuye. However, six year old
Irene escaped from the parish. Irene’s hand
was chopped in half by the soldiers and she
had a wound that was brutally infected.
The doctors predicted that she would die,
but little Irene refused to give up the fight
for her life. Unfortunately, Irene eventually died because she had no medicines or
pain killers to help her. Had she been provided with proper medicines, Irene would
have been able to live. However, the country was so poor at this time that there was
virtually no medicine.
Philip Govrevtich:
A staff writer for the New York Times
and a contributing editor to the Forward,
Philip Govrevtich has reported from places
such as Africa, Asia, and Europe for many
known magazines such as Harper’s, Granta,
and The New York Review of Books. He reported on the Rwanda Genocide in his book
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We
Will be Killed With Our Families.
CHARACTERS
Roméo Dallaire - Lieutenant General
Canadian senator, humanitarian, and author who
served as Force Commander of the United Nations
peacekeeping forces for Rwanda. He was trying to
stop the genocide being waged by Hutu extremists.
Dallaire realized something was amiss when, on
January 22, 1994, a French DC-8 aircraft landed in
Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, loaded with ammunition and weapons for the Rwandan Armed Forces
(FAR). (FAR was the Hutu army under Habyarimana's
control.) Through an informant, Dallaire learned
that these weapons were to be used for an attack
on Tutsis after the Belgians would have been forced
to withdraw by violence orchestrated by the Interahamwe. Despite his telegram to the UN, Dallaire
was not permitted to seize the weapons, as this was
deemed to be an action beyond his UN mandate.
Hamis Kamuhanda:
Until the aircraft holding President Juvenile
Habyarimana and Burundian counterpart Cyprien
Ntayamira was shot down, the Kamuhanda family
was an ordinary Rwandan family who lived a comfortable life (BBC). At the time Hamis Kamuhanda
was just a regular innocent 11 year old who had
yet to expierience the harsh realities of life. "The
following day we had rumours that Hutus were out
to kill every Tutsi in the country, claiming that we,
the Tutsis had killed the Hutu president. We were
advised to stay indoors. I had never seen my parents so agitated and terrified all my life" (Kamuhanda). When the Hutus came to their house, Hamis
played dead and one of the soldiers cut off his leg.
The Khmuhandas then went into hiding for the rest
of the genocide. However, the Khmuhandas consider
themselves to be lucky to be alive.
ACT 1
Scene 1: Philip Govrevitch enters and begins to speak about
his experience as a journalist in rwanda during the genocide
of 1994.
Scene 2: Lt. Gen. Romeo dallaire enters and speaks to Govrevitch of the differences between the Bantu speaking agricultural Hutu, who traditionally live in clan, the Tutsi who are
warrior nomads and the Pygmy natives, the Twa.
Scene 3: Dallaire stands and details the events of april 6th
and 7th of 1994. In which the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana is killed when his plane is shot out of the sky.
In the background Hutu extremists act out the killings of
april 7th.
Scene 4: Gourevitch and Dallaire speak about the massacres
Events that occurred during April and May 1994.
In the background, the following events are acted out:
Massacre at Gikondo, Massacre at the Nyarubuye Roman
Catholic Church, The Kibuye Massacres and the deaths of
250000 people
Scene 5: : Gourevitch and Dallaire continue to speak about the
Events that occurred during June and July 1994.
In the background, the following political events were acted
out: The RPF taking control of the president’s palace, The
french establishing a safe zone in southwest Rwanda, and one
million people beginning to flee to congo.
“Rwanda is the most
murderous place in Africa.”
-Philip Govrevitch
ACT 2
Scene 1: As Dallaire and Govrevitch continue to talk when 11
year old boy enters. His name is Hamis and speaks about his experience during the genocide and how being a survivor has affected his young view of the world.
Scene 2: A young girl, age two, acts out the experience of
Muteteli Kirenga during the rwandan genocide and her eventual
death in a refuge.
Scene 3: A man, age 30, called Fidele Ingabire enters and acts out
the events that occured during and after the death of his family
members due to the Rwandan genocide.
Scene 4: Irene Umotoni, age 6, enters and acts out her experiences during the Rwandan genocide until her tragic death.
Scene 5: Govrevitch and Dallaire speak about the end of the
Genocide in mid-July 1994 with the RPF gaining control of
the country.
“Hatred does not solve anything” -Hamis Kamuhanda
AUTHORS NOTE
In 1990 the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group, composed mostly of Tutsi refugees, invaded northern Rwanda from
Uganda. The Rwandan Civil War, fought between the Hutu regime,
with support from Francophone nations of Africa and France itself, and the RPF, with support from Uganda, vastly increased the
ethnic tensions in the country and led to the rise of Hutu
Power.Hutu Power asserted that the Tutsi intended to enslave Hutus and thus must be resisted at all costs.
The assassination of Habyarimana in April 1994 was the proximate
cause of the mass killings of Tutsis and pro-peace Hutus. They
were carried out primarily by two Hutu militias associated with
political parties: the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi. The
genocide was directed by a Hutu power group known as the Akazu.
The killing also marked the end of the peace agreement meant to
end the war and the Tutsi RPF restarted their offensive, eventually defeating the army and seizing control of the country.
The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass killing of hundreds of
thousands of Rwandan Tutsis and Hutu political moderates by the
Hutu dominated government under the Hutu Power ideology. Over
the course of approximately 100 days, or more, from the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana on April 6 through mid-July, at
least 500,000 people were killed, according to the estimate of Human Rights Watch. Other
estimates of the death toll have ranged between 500,000 and
1,000,000, (a commonly quoted figure is 800,000), or as much as
20% of the total population of the country.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Adekunle, Julius O. The Culture and Customs of Rwanda. New
York: n.p., n.d. Print.
Dallaire, Romeo, Lt. Gen. Shake Hands with the Devil. New
York: Carrol & Graf, 2003. Print.
“Eyewitness: A survivor’s story.” BBC News 2 Apr. 2001: n. pag.
BBC News. Web. 18 May 2012.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1252049.stm>.
Gourevitch, Philip. We Wish to Inform You That Tommorrow We
Will Be Killed with Our Familes. New York: Pan, 1998.
Print.
Peace Pledge Union. “Rwanda 1994 Genocide.” ppu. N.p., 2010.
Web. 18 May 2012.
<http://www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_rwanda.html>.
"Romeo Dallaire (Author of They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die
Like Children)." Share Book Recommendations With Your
Friends, Join Book Clubs, Answer Trivia. N.p., n.d. Web. 18
May 2012.
<http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5143886.Romeo_Dall
aire>.
The Rwandan Genocide. New York: Greenhaven, 2004. Print.