Rwanda, "Shake Hands with the Devil". General Dallaire's film fails "Reality Check"
by Robin Philpot
Global Research, November 22, 2007
During elections, the media like to do “fact checks” or “reality checks”. The exercise should be applied to all historical films. Especially when the people concerned proclaim it “the film of record”.
That is how Canadian Liberal Party Senator Romeo Dallaire appointed for life described his recent film Shake Hands with the Devil based on his book with the same title. His film sorely fails any serious fact check.
Let’s begin with the end. If you waited until all the credits scroll by, you will see it is copyrighted ©Dallaireproductions. It means two things: 1) Senator Dallaire incorporated a film company so as to get a cut of the profits; 2) he approved every single comma in the script.
That means that he also approved another line in credits. As with other historical films, Shake Hands with the Devil has a “everybody lived happily ever after” in the credits. In Dallaire’s film, you read: “Since July 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Front has governed Rwanda in a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation.”
Nothing could be further from the truth! And everybody knows it.
When Rwandan prisons have been overflowing with some 80,000 prisoners for more than a decade without trial and without clear charges, you cannot talk about “forgiveness and reconciliation”. You cannot talk of “forgiveness and reconciliation” when you know about the murderous war that the Kagame regime inflicted and continues to inflict on the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo since 1996. Nor when you think of the many massacres and selected assassinations carried out by the Rwandan army and its agents in Rwanda, in other African countries and elsewhere in the world. Nor can you talk about “forgiveness and reconciliation” when you think of the cold-blooded assassination of Quebec priests Claude Simard and Guy Pinard by RPF agents. Fathers Simard and Pinard were eliminated respectively in October 1994 and February 1997 – Pinard while he was celebrating mass just as Archbishop was assassinate – because they dared to denounce crimes committed by Paul Kagame and the Rwandan army.
That sentence in the credits shows the current bias of Senator Dallaire in favour of the Kigali regime. In that he is a
by Robin Philpot
Global Research, November 22, 2007
During elections, the media like to do “fact checks” or “reality checks”. The exercise should be applied to all historical films. Especially when the people concerned proclaim it “the film of record”.
That is how Canadian Liberal Party Senator Romeo Dallaire appointed for life described his recent film Shake Hands with the Devil based on his book with the same title. His film sorely fails any serious fact check.
Let’s begin with the end. If you waited until all the credits scroll by, you will see it is copyrighted ©Dallaireproductions. It means two things: 1) Senator Dallaire incorporated a film company so as to get a cut of the profits; 2) he approved every single comma in the script.
That means that he also approved another line in credits. As with other historical films, Shake Hands with the Devil has a “everybody lived happily ever after” in the credits. In Dallaire’s film, you read: “Since July 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Front has governed Rwanda in a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation.”
Nothing could be further from the truth! And everybody knows it.
When Rwandan prisons have been overflowing with some 80,000 prisoners for more than a decade without trial and without clear charges, you cannot talk about “forgiveness and reconciliation”. You cannot talk of “forgiveness and reconciliation” when you know about the murderous war that the Kagame regime inflicted and continues to inflict on the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo since 1996. Nor when you think of the many massacres and selected assassinations carried out by the Rwandan army and its agents in Rwanda, in other African countries and elsewhere in the world. Nor can you talk about “forgiveness and reconciliation” when you think of the cold-blooded assassination of Quebec priests Claude Simard and Guy Pinard by RPF agents. Fathers Simard and Pinard were eliminated respectively in October 1994 and February 1997 – Pinard while he was celebrating mass just as Archbishop was assassinate – because they dared to denounce crimes committed by Paul Kagame and the Rwandan army.
That sentence in the credits shows the current bias of Senator Dallaire in favour of the Kigali regime. In that he is a
