After the Pro-Immigrant rally, I saw Paul Rusesabagina speak. He is the man who saved over 1,200 human lives as depicted in the movie Hotel Rwanda.
He had two themes: One was the silence of the international community regarding the massacres in Rwanda, Congo, and now Sudan. Sure, there's a lot of talk about the genocide in Darfur, but indecisiveness is the same as compliance. Write your representatives! Tell them to shut down radio stations that preach hate. Mr. Rusesabagina believes that had the radio station that called Tutsis "cock roaches" been shut down immediately, the genocide in Rwanda would not have happened. Rwandans rely heavily on radio. The spread of that hate could have been stopped.
His other theme was the power of words. When the rebels tried to recruit him to fight, he refused. "I decided not to fight with guns, but to fight with my brain. I believe in the power of words," he told his audience. The greatest lesson he has learned in life is "to negotiate with evil." He used words to save the lives of those people who stayed in the hotel. He never used the words Hutu or Tutsi until he was prompted to do so by questions. He referred to his people as “Rwandans.” He understands the impact of those words.
Imagine the good that An Ordinary Man (the title of his book) has done. Those 1,200 plus people will have families and their children will have children and so on for eternity. They will live with his message. It is one of cautious pessimism, but also hope. You don't know if your neighbor is a good or a bad person, but you can convince that person of good with your words.
Paul Rusesabagina, the short Rwandan man, is the voice of a new generation of holocaust survivors. We need to listen.
3 comments:
Yeah, I am not sure I agree with him when he was talking about shutting down the radio station. Obviously, preaching hate is bad, but it must have struck a nerve in the society for it to have any impact. And that, it seems to me, is the real issue. Appearantly, these people preaching hate had a captive audience that already had these prejudices. For another example: Nazis before WWII had an easy scapegoat to blame the problems in Germany on (and their was probably latent anti-Semitism already). I am just saying that shutting down the radio station is not the solution, the solution is to figure out a way so the hate between the two groups is worked out and cannot be exploited by both sides of the political spectrum. This, however, is much easier to say than do. Wow, this ties right back into our conversation about Israel last night.
Good point Asa. However, I don't believe that these two points are mutually exclusive. Shutting down a media outlet that spews hate may not cut deep into the surface of that hate as you've described, but it is an important step and must be taken. It can do a lot of good too and needs to be done.
That was my point about Israel too, we need to force the extremists to feel like they are outside of the mainstream. It takes a lot of time to change the political landscape like that, but that doesn't mean we can't take small steps towards achieving that goal.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I agree with you. The only question that remains is: where is the line between exerting one's free speech and inciting a riot? I think different people would have different lines.
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