Monsters Unlocked

Re: # 5
>i wish god would do more to not let this happen
I watched the film Hotel Rwanda and firstly let me say, it was an education for me and my friend (from australia) I remember being aware, as I am now only vaguley about the horror that exists in the world, with news os a massacre and words mentioned of hutus and tutsi rebels, but having a day to day life that involves day to day activities and relations my head never got high enough above my reality to witness fully our greater reality.. and this film has made me want to find out more about the reality of what is happening now, today in the horror stricken parts of our world and what and how i can help, if at all. I thankk God for Paul Rusesabagina, and people like him. He had the strength through his Godly grace and that, as well as our monsters, live in us all.

The Discourse of Violence:



Kudos Jawahara for taking this issue up. What makes these ordinary people turn into violent monsters??

Yes it is politics...but this politics uses a special type of discourse to incite all these ordinary mortals to be convinced that it is their divinely ordained duty to kill `others`.

It is the ``discourse about otherness`` that is being used by all these so called leaders to incite ordinary people into these ethnic and religious cleaning. It is the discourse about ``Us and Them``, it is the discourse about ``Sacred versus profane`` , it is the discourse about ``human essences`` , it is the discourse about the ``givens of nature`` , it is the discourse about ``chosen ones`` with their ``chosen homelands``, it is the discourse of hatred that cleverly uses the bipolarities within the so called religions to make people ``hate`` those attributed with ``otherness``.

Descontruct these ``bi-polarities`` that form the foundational pillars of these `discourses of hate`.......and then you will find all such violence dissipating from the world..........

kaalchakra, welcome back. What you said is profound.But I think the ethnography or what Alephnull calls a disease of the mind, has to be specific to cultures and places. Kaurasach has attributed this to Colonialism.I think we have to dig deeper underneath such statements, all of which hold some amount of truth though. A mixture of religion,racism,colonialism, oppression..is that enough to explain all this? Even if it is, it is very necessary that we get to the bottom of this and traverse the exact steps which lead to the current civilazation, or lack of it.

At the end of the day, all civilization is impermanent. And most human beings and genocial killers are interchangeable.

Those who forget or reject this truth, suffer. Those who know it and accept it, flourish.

Jawahara,

The character of Paul resembles that of Oscar Schindler - person belonging to the community that perpetrated the crimes throwing his weight behind the victims. The Rwanda massacre inevitably brings back the gruesome incidents of partition. Millions of lives destroyed, displaced and brutalized in the name of religion. It must have been the same in India too. An orgy of rape, pillage and plunder, victimization of people who were neighbours and friends not long ago. Unfortunately, these things are always analyzed in the hindsight, when passions have cooled down, and the macabre dance of death looks senseless. In the heat of moment we never think about scars and blood, broken bones and crushed craniums, revenge is the driving force.

The sad part is that we`ll relive the horrors of partition one day. This time it`ll not be with machetes, daggers and swords, it`ll be with nukes, missiles and tanks. Uncountable number of people will be roasted to death, centres of civilization will be converted to craters and sub-continent will be turned into a haunting graveyard. I`m not prophetic but...

In 1962 when Belgium left Rwanda power was given to the majority, the Tutsis.

Shouldn`t it be ``the minority, the Tutsis``?

In 1962 when Belgium left Rwanda power was given to the majority, the Tutsis.

Shouldn`t it be ``the minority, the Tutsis``?

jawahara:

welcome back:)

well said!

only human beings can kill like this: the ultimate predator, cunning, hunting in groups, with weapons and without remorse. And we all have this machete killer lurking within us. It only awaits some fuel to burst forth and destroy others and us along with it.

there is only a thin line within each one of us separating the insaan from the haiwaan

at the flickof some cosmic switch (partition, new york blackout, chechenya, occupied palestine, kashmir--all involved parties, godhra-gujrat, new delhi, karachi...and yes nazi germany) the dormant haiwaan surfaces...

lve

t

ALL these hatreds were created by the colonists to subdue natives with ease....and maintain their rule. It still continues in Middle East and around the world.

When will the idiots see thru the game?

Thanks Chowk staff and thanks AlephNull for being such a careful reader.

leaves me speehless in sadness. how can humans be so inhumane.
its horrible and i wish god would do more to not let this happen

Re: # 2 & #1

Thanks for the correction. The specific line in the article has been updated to reflect this.

jawahara,

thank you for writing this and sharing it with us on chowk. i like what you`ve written in the last three paragraphs. . . and i agree. that and more needs to happen.

no, it is not only monsters who can kill like ``they`` have in europe, in rwanda, in darfur, in bosnia, and in our own nations. i want to say more, but less is better sometimes, and so. . thank you. for being aware and for bringing your awareness here.

--ana

Errata: Sorry about this folks. Tutsis were the minority favored by Belgium, not the Hutus. Apparently my brain was out to lunch when I wrote that part. Apologies!

From the article:

``Rwandans who were taller, with slimmer builds and noses were arbitrarily picked to be Hutus, judged to be more elegant and, therefore, more European. They were favored over the majority who were called Tutsis.``

No, it`s the other way around.