Forsaken Cries: The Story of Rwanda

In the spring of 1994, the world was "shocked" by the genocidal killing in an African country that had hitherto attracted little global attention: Rwanda. Close to one million people were killed, making it the largest systematic murder of a particular race since the Holocaust. While critics at the time dismissed the tragedy as "tribal conflict," the reality--as this hard-hitting documentary makes abundantly clear--was more complicated, though no less obvious. The program offers a brief history of the class system set up by the colonizing Belgians in 1919 which arbitrarily elevated the Tutsi (14% of Rwanda's population) over the darker-skinned Hutu (85%) and Twa (1%) after WWI. For the rest of this century, Tutsi and Hutu have warred over a political system imposed from without. Combining interviews with local officials, social commentators, and Amnesty International representatives, along with archival and brutal contemporary footage (this is not for the weak of stomach, but then again human rights violations are not pretty), Forsaken Cries makes a convincing case that the warning signs were in place well before the actual slaughter transpired. Whether it could have been avoided--as the producers here insist--is perhaps not quite as simple an issue (the atrocities which even now continue against refugees in Zaire remind us that international law or outrage does not necessarily stop or prevent senseless bloodshed). Sure to stimulate class discussion, and accompanied by an extensive notebook-sized study guide, this is recommended, with the aforementioned warning about the graphic nature of some of the imagery. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)