Long Distances/La Longue Route...: Ghosts of Rwanda

"Rwanda will never leave me: it's in the pores of my body. We saw lots of them dying, and lots of those eyes still haunt me -- angry eyes, innocent eyes. They're looking at me with my blue beret, and they're saying, 'What in the hell happened?' ... And they're absolutely right: How come I failed? How come my mission failed?" (General Romeo Dallaire)

Today, an important Rwandan genocide suspect was arrested so I thought I'd post a very interesting documentary about the genocide. Idelphonse Nizeyimana was head of intelligence and military operations at Rwanda's elite military training school. He is charged with adhering to and executing a plan to wipe out the Tutsis.
"Ghosts of Rwanda" is a PBS Frontline documentary about the genocide and particularly the response (or lack thereof) of America and the West.Even though Rwanda is a very small and unknown country at the time America, Europe and the UN had been warned about what was happening. Instead of intervening, the West resisted intervention from the beginning.Americans, French, Belgians and Italians citizens on the ground were all evacuated and the entire U.N. Security Council voted to withdraw 90% of the peacekeepers in Rwanda.General Romeo Dallaire was left with 450 ill-prepared troops from developing countries.Leaders refused to call it genocide and the world failed to intervene.

The documentary can be watched online.It is gruesome but very well done.This is the first part of the documentary but the rest can be watched online as well (on youtube or here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/video/ )

Here's the website on "Ghosts of Rwanda" where you can find a timeline and several interviews.