Rwanda Focus of New Film

Newswise — The new film "Hotel Rwanda" tells of the 1994 genocide in which 800,000 people were killed in 100 days. UAB anthropologist Christopher Taylor, Ph.D., author of "Sacrifice as Terror: The Rwandan Genocide of 1994," made a harrowing escape from Rwanda when the killings began in April 1994. "The Hutu extremist militias in Rwanda didn't possess 'technicals,' [automatic weapons] nor did most of them have firearms of any sort. Most were un- or under-employed adolescent males armed with clubs and machetes and imbued with the assurance that they were acting out the will of their country's leaders with the support of the majority of their compatriots. They could have been neutralized without an enormous loss of life on the part of an intervening force."