I read the book I shook hands with the devil, by Roméo Dallaire, eighteen years ago. My boys were teenagers, they are now both fathers.
This book challenged me so much, I suffered for Roméo Dallaire, a true, upright, humane man… I was incredulous at the diplomatic and political obstacles that were daily occurrences for the general. A genocide was taking place in front of humanity and he seemed so alone to see it and to communicate it.
This evening, reading the text of Mme Magdaline Boutros in The duty (April 7), something has cleared up in my very foggy mind since the beginning of this conflict in Ukraine.
I cannot live normally while Ukrainian children of the same age as my grandchildren die under the bombs of the Russians. I can pretend to live my daily life, but I sleep badly.
I can’t understand how we can, as a society, as human beings, watch Ukrainians die daily on the newscast and then see on another channel if the Canadian has won. It’s incredible !
This brave man, Roméo Dallaire, went through hell to save lives in Rwanda. He is today the man who has the most accurate word… The title of M’s textme Boutros, “The world and its moral bankruptcy”, says it all!
Despite our race’s technological advances, we are unable to intervene to stop a massacre when it occurs. Since Rwanda in 1994, our species has failed to learn the lessons to prepare for another carnage. You have to understand that the planet will always have Putins, Kim Jong-uns, Bolsonaros, Trumps, that seems obvious to me.
General Dallaire was fighting against a diplomatic and political “machine” that did not respond to the daily horror that was experienced in Kigali and in other Rwandan cities.
Eighteen years later, in Ukraine, the situation is a dismal failure. Our species has not grown up, the horrifying daily images on our screens are not 6:00 p.m. news…it is death live. Later, another Ukrainian general Dallaire will describe this massacre.
Dante, Italian writer and thinker of the Middle Ages, wrote: “In hell, the most burning places are reserved for those who, in times of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. “Several of us will find ourselves in the most burning places.
Very sad observation for our species in April 2022! Let’s not blame anyone in particular, it’s our species that hasn’t understood anything.
General Dallaire saw clearly in 1994 and he still sees sadly very clearly in 2022!