Eye Candy #47 - "Shake Hands with the Devil"

Shake Hands with Devil: I’ve been waiting for quite some time for this movie to come out on DVD in the US. Sharing the title of his biography, this 2004 documentary charts the career of Romeo Dallaire, the force commander responsible for the United Nations Assistance Mission to Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, where 800,000 Tutsis and moderates Hutus were killed in approximately 100 days. Dallaire was responsible for the initially 2500-strong UN peacekeeping mission that ended in catastrophic failure. Dallaire was out-gunned, outnumbered, under-funded, and marginalized by his own superiors. He flailed against the United Nations. Rather than expand his forces to the asked-for 4000 soldiers, the UN LOWERED his troop strength to 260 soldiers in a country of 8 million. France was running their own operations to support genocidal Hutus against Tutsi rebels (who ultimately ended the genocide on their own). The United States under Clinton refused to call it a genocide (the film has footage of Clinton trying to pass the buck). Dallaire and his men witnessed some of the greatest acts of human barbarism in recent memory (massacres of children, people hacked to death, bodies lining the streets with dogs eating the corpses, rape). The film also documents his return to Rwanda 10 years later a shaken man (there is a confrontation between Dallaire and a Belgian senator where the white European‘s concern is still, 10 years on, only for White Europeans). The film is full of graphic footage and stills taken during the massacre (you will see people executed on camera). The failures of the world to prevent Africans from dying needlessly reinforces the racist nature of the United Nations, that is either too big, too weak, or too lazy to do anything. I’m beside myself with anger. The lessons of Rwanda have already been repeated in Darfur. Dallaire says, “Every life counts”. And he’s g-ddamn right. Woodchuck sez, “Watch this.”