Genocide survivor 'uneasy'
2007-09-20 13:48
New York - Jean-Pierre Sagahutu always wanted to visit New York but he has mixed
feelings now that he's in the city to talk about a movie he
worked on that depicts the genocide in his country in 1994.
Sagahutu was among dozens of Rwandan genocide survivors on
the crew of Beyond the Gates, which stars John Hurt and Hugh
Dancy as a priest and a teacher at a school where over 2 000
Tutsis were massacred after UN troops withdrew.
"I always dreamed of coming to the United States,
especially New York. Now I'm here but I'm here because there
were a million people killed in my country," he said in an
interview before the film's DVD release on Tuesday.
"If I'd come to see a jazz concert, fine, but I came for a
horrible story," he said, after relating how he spent 2 1/2
months hiding in a well to escape the genocide in which at
least 800&Nbsp;000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus died.
"I wanted to come, I'm very happy, but at the same time ...
I'm talking about unbearable things," said Sagahutu, who was
transport captain on the film, organising logistics.
People are dying like beasts
The United Nations and Western powers were criticised for
failing to intervene and Rwanda is often cited by those now
urging international intervention in Sudan's Darfur region
where international experts say some 200 000 people have died.
"Working on the film is good because it relates the
message," said Sagahutu, who is in his mid-40s. "They'll say to
themselves, 'We did nothing but at least we know that in that
little country a million people were killed.'"
He added that he was no politician but he couldn't help
wondering: "How is it possible that for three or four years
people are dying like beasts in Darfur?"
Describing how he survived, Sagahutu said a friend brought
him food three or four times a week while he was in hiding but
he lost half his body weight and spent the whole time crouched
in the dark, unable to tell if it was day or night.
When he finally emerged, he was barely able to stagger to a
highway where armed men in a pickup truck came across him.
"All I asked them was, 'Don't kill me with a machete,'"
Sagahutu said. "I was ready to die but not by a machete. I
said, 'I'll pay you to kill me with a gun.'"
The men turned out to be Tutsi militants who took him to
safety.
Criticism in Rwanda
"Beyond the Gates," originally titled "Shooting Dogs," was
filmed at the Ecole Technique Officielle, the school in Kigali
where Belgian UN troops abandoned more than 2 000 Tutsis to
be slaughtered by machete-wielding killers.
Like the more famous 2004 movie Hotel Rwanda, about a
hotel manager who sheltered 1 200 people, it drew some
criticism in Rwanda, especially for focusing on a fictional
English priest who refuses to leave and is killed.
Reviews were mixed - many praising the acting and the
gripping drama but some finding fault with what one called the
"dismayingly conventional white-guy perspective."
The film did not make a major impact in theatres but Fox
Home Entertainment is hoping DVD sales will reach more people.
It brought Sagahutu to New York to promote the film with
Dancy, who plays an idealistic teacher.
Director Michael
Caton-Jones said he put pictures and biographies of crew
members such as Sagahutu in the credits of the film because he
wanted to show Rwanda today, with survivors prospering.
But Sagahutu said despite outward signs that things have
changed for the better, "the problem is in people's heads."
"I see that things have changed, I live in a nice house
with electricity but I think my head is still sick," he said.