This is a picture that shows how thousands and thousands of people walked into Red Cross camps looking for help from the horrific genocide in Rwanda. Some of these camps held approximatively sixty thousand people but never turned anyone away. They just kept taking people in and doing their best to help them. When the people would walk into the camps they would be in rags, dirty, exhausted, and suffering from diseases such as malaria and dysentery. At least one million eight hundred thousand Rwandans had been forced to flee their villages and live in these make shift camps estimated the International Committee of the Red Cross. Many other people were forced not only to flee their villages but also to flee the country. At some of the camps, or out on the roads Hutu people would come up and kill the Red Cross workers and patients. This put the people of the Red Cross in a lot of danger but unlike most countries they decided to continue working and trying hard to safe the victims of the massacre.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/05/opinion/05iht-edcorn.html
This link is to an article from the New York Times written by Cornelio Sommaruga, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross. It was written while the genocide in Rwanda was happening and explains a lot about what it was like for the people of the Red Cross. The thing that hit me the most about this article though was the fact that they even said,
"Attempts to stop the massacre and bring the warring factions to the negotiating table, undertaken by African heads of state and United Nations representatives, have had no tangible results as yet." To me this is saying that everyone knew about the genocide but no one decided to take action. The Red Cross did a lot for Rwanda and it is good they were there to help because other wise things would have been a lot worse.
Hey Halee, first off good job on your blog, I really enjoyed the cool background you choose. I also, choose the topic of Rwanda, so it was cool to read someone else’s blog about it. I enjoyed reading something about the Red Cross for a change, because neither I nor anyone in the previous blogs I have read about Rwanda so far has mentioned anything about them. You included a lot of information about the Red Cross that I did not know about for example, how they were also being killed by the Hutus, and you mentioned that even though the rest of the world turned their backs on Rwanda and even though they were being killed the Red Cross still stayed and helped out and I believe that was a good way to help conclude your blog and to show how the Red Cross supported Rwanda so nice job Halee.
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Brandon
Halee, I really liked your approach to the genocides by going with the Red Cross. It is really interesting how you used a quote that an actual red cross member, let alone the president, said. I really liked how you supported the red cross because they did work really hard and they did do an amazing job with the amount of lives they saved. Your post was well thought out and it was very well written. I also wanted to tell you that I liked the format of your blog, I could tell you but a lot of effort into it!
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