Estrella

Two weeks ago the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) heralded the twentieth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, which began in April of 1994 and lasted for 100 days until June of that same day. It became know as the quickest mass execution and killing spree since the Holocaust. In 1994, the Hutu president of Rwanda’s plane was shot down, and the blame was put on the Tutsis, who had historically been in power, but there wasn’t any hard evidence to who shot down the plane. This incident followed the peace process between ethnic Tutsis and Hutus, which only erupted into a civil war turned genocide when Hutu radical militias known as the interhamwe went from village to village, encouraging Hutus to murder their Tutsi neighbors and any Tutsi sympathizers. Graves still remain in Rwanda, and bones and sinew still arise out of the churches where Tutsis and Tutsi sympathizers went for safety but were instead trapped to be hacked to death. Hutus and Tutsis now l...

Cambodia: the name evokes pictures of poverty and sex trafficking for many people today. But not so long ago, there was one government’s genocide against its own people. The film, The Killing Fields , is a small account of that genocide that took place there in the 1970’s during the culmination of the Vietnam War. Sydney Schanberg played by actor Sam Waterston was one of the main protagonists of the story, but really he is the medium for which the film’s hero, Dith Pran tells his story. Schanberg was The New York Times journalist in Cambodia right before and at the set of the Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia and its capital, Phnom Penh. Pran was Schanberg’s interpreter and guide through Cambodia so Schanberg could obtain the necessary photos and information for his New York Times stories. Schanberg was forced to evacuate with the other foreigners living in Cambodia once the Khmer Rouge had taken over, leaving Pran to survive on his own in one of the Khmer Roug...

A promise of a job can come in many different forms, but for young women in former Eastern bloc countries, there could be danger. Human trafficking has pillaged eastern European countries and preyed on the innocent for the expense of free labor and sexual exploitation. Larysa Kondracki’s The Whistleblower shows a view into that realm where those who you thought you could trust to protect actually are those who try to persecute you. The Whistleblower focused on the real-life account of the Natacha’s 1 who came from Eastern Europe with the promise of better jobs but who were trafficked into the sex trade. Kathryn Bolkovac (portrayed by actress Rachel Weisz) was the former Nebraskan cop who took the opportunity to become a U.N. peacekeeper in formerly war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina. Once in Bosnia Bolkovac uncovered a major trafficking operation of Eastern European women into Bosnia, which was being operated and controlled by U.N. peacekeepers, multinational companies’ contractors...