Hotel Rwanda

Paul Rusesabagina spoke at the university last night.

For those of you who have never heard of him, he is the man who, at the peril of his own life, sheltered 1269 people during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Last night, he spoke about the genocide. He told us the entire story again. All of it.He didn't tell us a simple, heartwarming story to touch our hearts and make us feel slightly guilty about what had happened. He told us the truth, in all its details. Every single detail.

Details enough to tear your heart. Details enough to make you wonder why, why humans would be so cruel, so beyond animal as to act like this.

Listening to Mr. Rusesabagina recount his story was very personal for me. You see, when I was younger, my neighbors hosted a young man, Olivier, from Burundi. He had escaped the war and come to Europe through networks of helping hands and churches. I was too young to understand what war really meant, or the horrors it entailed. Listening to Mr. Rusesabagina opened my eyes. Finally, I understood what Olivier had been through. Finally, I understood what mankind was capable of.

This isn't another one of the horror stories the media brings to the wide-screen TVs in comfortable, safe, familiar living rooms. This is much worse. It's real.

I don't understand why. I don't understand why anyone, in any possible situation, would feel such hatred for a people to want to exterminate all of them. I don't know why these killings would escalate into a full-blown war. I don't know why the battles would grow so meaningless as to become only mass killings, with no sides, no victory for anyone and death for all. I don't know why children would be forced to join the ranks of the killers when there are no adults left alive to continue the conflict. I don't know why civilians are massacred routinely. I don't know why it's been going on for fourteen years now. I don't know why UN peacekeepers pulled out and let the carnage continue. I don't know why the world turns a blind eye.

Something he said during his story touched me, and I don't know why I haven't seen it before. During commemoration ceremonies of the Holocaust, world leaders all pledged two words, two words Mr. Rusesabagina said were the most overused and hypocritical words in the world: 'never' and 'again.' To him, this promise has turned into 'again, and again, and again.'

Over six million people have died since the beginning of the genocide. Why then is no one doing anything? Standing over a Holocaust memorial pledging to keep such horrors from ever again becoming reality means nothing if at the same time, people are dying because they are Tutsis, Hutus, children, men, women, black, white, Muslim, Christian, Tibetan, or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. All the time.

Why are we not doing anything?

In his conclusion, he told us that we are the world's future leaders, we have the power to change this. Someone asked this question: Even if we are the future leaders of the world, this is happening now. What can we do to stop it?

And he gave the most straightforward answer I have ever heard: Paul Kagame, Rwanda's current president, is responsible for much of the genocide. He is not a democratic leader. If he had his country's best interests in mind, he would help it get up. He would build roads, build schools, create systems to pump life into the mutilated ghost it has become. His children would go to school in Rwanda, not to private schools in Europe. His wife would live in Rwanda, not in Europe. His money would go to the people, not to weapons dealers and private bank accounts. Because of his immunity as president, he is not affected by the many indictments issued against him by several countries. To stop him, to make him think twice about killing, we have to stop the source of his power: money. Freezing his assets will slow him down.

I know this won't solve all of the killings. People in Darfur are still dying. People in Rwanda will still be killed.

But it will be one step forward.

We can't just sit here and watch. We are hypocrites, each and everyone of us.

We need to do something.