Carl Wilkens, who stayed in Rwanda to help during the genocide, gives talk at NHS — Transcript

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1. 0:00you know we don't turn them away we
2. 0:01don't we treat them better than we try
3. 0:03to take care of ourselves I mean it that
4. 0:05kind of a culture and as soon as I say
5. 0:11it there's another voice in my head that
6. 0:13is saying so then what about killing
7. 0:16your neighborhood if you're kind and
8. 0:18gracious to foreigners how are you
9. 0:19killing your neighbor and i would say
10. 0:22that there are other dynamics at play
11. 0:24too in the killing your neighbor for
12. 0:29example when you start to introduce fear
13. 0:32in fear can override traditions and
14. 0:37practices and cultures fear can just
15. 0:40bulldoze more than over i can just
16. 0:42bulldoze out of the way all of the good
17. 0:45that often is helping us to make our
18. 0:48decisions in the respondent people and
19. 0:50and so there were at the beginning of
20. 0:55the genocide there were ten Belgian
21. 0:57soldiers who were killed and chopped
22. 1:00into pieces UN soldiers from Belgium
23. 1:04with the very clear message to the
24. 1:07international community get out of here
25. 1:10now it would be very hard to talk with
26. 1:14the families of those soldiers about
27. 1:17foreigners being respected in malaga and
28. 1:20so i would i would put forth it
29. 1:23absolutely there's different factors at
30. 1:25times that will override our better
31. 1:30nature and i would say fear is one of
32. 1:34them i would say this political greed
33. 1:36for power was another
34. 1:38in terms of the ordering of the killing
35. 1:40and arching of the Belgian soldiers but
36. 1:44I do feel like more than just kind of
37. 1:49the and there's historical you know
38. 1:51ideas to choose welcoming foreigners
39. 1:56into your home but i would i would say
40. 1:58it's it's and if anybody hear his
41. 2:01littler season you'd like to add
42. 2:02something to that i would i would more
43. 2:04than welcome it but somehow foreigners
44. 2:08do often represent a level of hope to
45. 2:11four people I've been with a Cambodian
46. 2:13genocide survivor as she spoke with a
47. 2:16group and she said we had some hope when
48. 2:19we still saw foreigners that we weren't
49. 2:21left alone so I think there can also be
50. 2:23this idea of yeah the outside community
51. 2:27we don't want it to be seen by the
52. 2:29outside world we don't want it to be
53. 2:31seen by forest but also a sense of
54. 2:35stepping back and looking at it from a
55. 2:37distance at saying wow this is not
56. 2:40something that we can support so having
57. 2:42foreigners there didn't help that idea