Chasing Orchid: Humanity Lost?

The legal definition of genocide according to www.preventgenocide.org is as follows:
The international legal definition of the crime of genocide is found in Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
Article II describes two elements of the crime of genocide:
1) the mental element, meaning the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such", and
2) the physical element which includes five acts described in sections a, b, c, d and e. A crime must include both elements to be called "genocide."

I know, I know, not the happiest topic to talk about. It started innocently enough; I teach world history to special education students. We were discussing Africa, specifically Egypt and the Fertile Crescent. Need I say my kids were snoozing by the end of the class period? Ancient history in a foreign place is boring to them. So I decided to bring them closer to the present by introducing Rwanda circa 1994. For those of you who don’t know, remember or were too young at that time, Rwanda endured a horrific period of time in 1994. Around one million members of the Tutsi tribe were murdered by their fellow man, specifically the Hutu tribe.

This certainly caught my students’ attention and while doing some research, I came across the movie “Hotel Rwanda.” This movie is based on the true story of one man, Paul Rusesabagina who incidentally is a Hutu. He manages to save 1200 people in the days during the genocide.

What really fascinated me about Rwanda was the ignorance displayed by the other nations of the world. They deliberately overlooked the atrocities that were happening. It’s also interesting that there wasn’t more media coverage when this happened. I vaguely remember hearing bits and pieces about the “conflict” in Rwanda but never anything close to the horrors that were really going on.

It seems the human race has a way of just turning a blind eye to something that doesn’t affect them directly. When I started researching genocides out of curiosity, I was amazed at the amount of information that popped up. Google or Yahoo genocide and see what happens.

I guess what really floors me is how little empathy people have for their fellow human being. A reporter in the movie “Hotel Rwanda” talks about how people will see the footage of the massacre, say it’s horrible and go back to eating their dinner. Sadly, this is pretty accurate. What happened to compassion? Even my own students when I introduced the topic were saying “Who cares, this has nothing to do with us.” They no longer feel that way, the atrocities they are witnessing through this movie have changed their views. I’m not sure how long this will last but I can only hope I’ve brought a little more humanity to the human race.

For those readers who would like more information, please refer to the website above or visit www.amnesty.org for the latest news on not only genocides but also other stories that need to be heard.