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Roméo Dallaire recounts his experience as the commander of a UN peacekeeping mission during the Rwandan genocide, highlighting the indifference of the international community and the horrors he witnessed. This powerful memoir urges readers to take action and make a difference in the world.
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Roméo Dallaire Instead, we watched as the devil took control of paradise on earth and fed on the blood of the people we were supposed to protect.“ „(This) is nothing more or less than the account of a few humans who were entrusted with the role of helping others taste the fruits of peace.
„I was not shunned for who I was, but for who I was assumed to be, and that experience remains burnt into my memory.“ „(As a leader,) I had to connect to deeper commitment, past friendship, kinship or ethnicity, to absolutely believe in the rightness and justness of my path.“
„On the plane, on the last leg of the trip that would change my whole life and that of my family, I was neither melancholy nor fearful. I wanted this command and I would throw everything I had at it.“
„I was determined not to go down in history as the commander who ran.“
„The actions of the west confirmed for all Rwandans..that the world didn‘t give a damn about Rwanda.“
„I had been left with a ragtag force to witness a crime against humanity...not only was intervening in the war not my mandate, I had been stripped of any capability to carry out offensive operations.“ “Some people did not even find someone to kill because there were more killers than victims” Hutu extremist „..asked me how I could still believe in God. I answered that I know there is a God because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him. I know the devil exists, and therefore there is a God.“ Dallaire On April 7th the death toll was 8,000. By April 19th it was 100,000. At the end of 100 days 800,000 people have been murdered, 90% are Tutsis. 10% of the population of Rwanda was killed. It is the fastest rate of mass killing in the 20th century. “Each person who we cut looked traumatized. They looked like their hearts had been taken away. They looked like they had been killed already. „ Hutu extremist
„It‘s horrific because every day, decisions meant either life or death. Every day. Real lives. Real people.“
„What terrible vulnerability we have all had to live with since Rwanda.“ „It‘s as if someone has sliced into my brain and grafted this horror called Rwanda frame by blood-soaked frame directly on my cortex.
„Are we all human, or are some more human then others? The only conclusion...is that we are in desperate need of a transfusion of humanity. In the future, we must be prepared to move beyond national self-interest to spend our resources and spill our blood for humanity.“ Engraved still in my brain is the judgement of a small group of bureaucrats who came to „assess“ the situation in the first weeks of the genocide:“We will recommend to our governments not to intervene as the risks are high and all that is here are humans.“ „I know intimately the cost in human lives of the inflexible UN Security Council mandate, the UN red tape..and my own personal limitations.“ „What is the root of it all, however, is the fundamental indifference of the world community to the plight of seven to eight million black Africans..that had no strategic or resource value to any world power.“
