Paul Rusesabagina
Paul Rusesabagina is a Rwandan humanitarian who, while working as a manager at the Hôtel des Mille Collines in Kigali, hid and protected 1,268 Hutu and Tutsi refugees from the Interahamwe militia during the Rwandan genocide. None of these refugees were hurt or killed during the attacks.
Rusesabagina's efforts were the basis of the dramatized Academy Award-nominated film Hotel Rwanda, in which he was portrayed by American actor Don Cheadle. He has homes in Brussels, Belgium and San Antonio, Texas. Rusesabagina founded the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation to fight for global human rights.
Birth and career
Rusesabagina was one of nine children born to a Hutu father and Tutsi mother in Murama, Rwanda. Rusesabagina's parents sent him to school in a town near Gitwe run by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. By age 13, he was fluent in English and French. He married his first wife, Esther Sembeba, on September 8, 1967. By the end of his adolescence, Rusesabagina had decided to become a minister. He and his wife moved to Cameroon where he studied at seminary.In December 1978, he, his wife, and two children moved to Kigali. While there, a childhood friend, Isaac Mulihano, invited Rusesabagina to apply for an opening to work at the Hôtel des Mille Collines. He was offered a position and was later sent to Switzerland and Brussels to study hotel management. Due to distance and his commitment to work, he and Esther legally separated in 1981. Rusesabagina was granted full custody of their three children: Diane, Lys, and Roger.
In 1987, he was invited to a wedding where he met Tatiana, the maid of honor and a Tutsi nurse in Ruhengeri. Rusesabagina bribed a frequent customer of the Mille Collines, a Minister of Health, to transfer Tatiana to a job at Central Hospital in Kigali. Tatiana and Paul married two years later and she adopted his children. Later, they had a son together named Trésor.
In 1992, Paul Rusesabagina was promoted to assistant general manager of the Diplomates Hotel, an affiliate of the Hôtel des Mille Collines.
The Rwandan genocide
In Rwanda, while Paul was receiving education in Nairobi, Switzerland, and Brussels, the Hutu-dominated government of President Juvénal Habyarimana faced pressure from a Tutsi-led rebel force as they tried to maintain their power. Machetes were ordered and brought to the capital and given to the Interahamwe; while Tutsi were being discriminated against, a rumour brought on by a radio station RTLM explained that the Tutsi wanted to kill all the Hutus.On April 6, 1994, President Habyarimana's plane was shot down by surface-to-air missiles as it approached the Kigali Airport for landing. On board the plane with Habyarimana were the President of Burundi Cyprien Ntaryamira, the Rwandan Army Chief of Staff Déogratias Nsabimana, and Colonel Elie Sagatwa, the head of presidential security. The wreckage landed in the garden of the presidential palace and everyone on board was killed. The Rwandan genocide started on April 6, 1994. On April 7, 1994, the Presidential Guard assassinated Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana along with many other ministers, mainly those from political parties different from that of the assassinated Habyarimana and those slated to play important roles in the transitional government that had been planned to be instated on April 8. Ten Belgian UN peacekeepers were also killed. Interahamwe hunted down Tutsi and began killing them at the start of the genocide. Though Rusesabagina was Hutu, his wife Tatiana was a Tutsi and his children considered mixed. Due to this, he was unable to escape from the war zone with his family.
When the violence broke out, Rusesabagina brought his family to the Hôtel des Mille Collines for safety. As other managers departed, Rusesabagina phoned the hotel's corporate owners, Sabena, and secured a letter appointing him the acting general manager of the Mille Collines.
When a murderous Hutu militia threatened to enter the Mille Collines, Rusesabagina ensured that his wife and children fled safely in a truck past the militia's roadblocks. The truck set out for Kigali airport so they could flee to another country. He remained in the hotel to tend to the refugees. Tatiana and her children were specifically targeted within the convoy by radio messages, and returned to the hotel after being attacked.
Tatiana's family faced extreme tragedy. Her mother, brother and sister-in-law, and four nieces and nephews died in the genocide. Her father paid Hutu militia to execute him so that he would not die a more painful death:
The Interahamwe left nearly 1 million dead. Tutsi rebels pushed the Hutu militia into the Congo in July 1994, after over half of the Tutsis in Rwanda had been murdered. Rusesabagina took orphans from the camp behind Tutsi rebel lines with him to Tanzania, to keep them safe and away from Rwanda. By the end of the massacre, four of his eight siblings remained alive. He comments in his autobiography that "for a Rwandan family, this is a comparatively lucky outcome."
Rusesabagina, his wife and children, and the refugees eventually managed to escape to Tanzania, thanks to the Rwandan Patriotic Front. After staying in Rwanda for two more years, Rusesabagina applied for asylum in Belgium and moved to Brussels with his wife, children, and his two adopted nieces in 1996 after receiving credible threats on his life. When they received threats again, they settled in Texas although they still maintain their Belgium home.
Awards received
- 2000 – Immortal Chaplains Prize for Humanity.
- 2005 – Wallenberg Medal of the University of Michigan
- 2005 – National Civil Rights Museum Freedom Award
- 2005 – Presidential Medal of Freedom
- 2007 – Honorary Doctorate of Law from the University of Guelph
- 2008 – Honorary Degree from Gustavus Adolphus College
- 2009 – Honorary Degree from Loyola University Chicago, at the Bachelor of Arts Commencement
- 2011 – Tom Lantos Human Rights Prize from The Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice
Feud with Paul Kagame and Controversy
On April 6, 2006, Kagame suggested, " should try his talents elsewhere and not climb on the falsehood of being a hero, because it's totally false." Francois Xavier Ngarambe, the president of Ibuka, the umbrella body of survivors' associations for the genocide, said of Rusesabagina, "he has hijacked heroism. He is trading with the genocide. He should be charged." Terry George, the director of Hotel Rwanda, characterized the comment as part of a smear campaign.
In 2007, Rusesabagina claimed that the killings committed by the RPF rebels during the conflict constituted genocide. The historian Gérard Prunier agrees that the RPF committed "horrendous crimes", but he rejects the notion of a "double genocide", which he argues "does not stand up to serious inquiry".
In 2008, the book Hotel Rwanda or the Tutsi Genocide as seen by Hollywood, by Alfred Ndahiro, a public relations advisor to Kagame, and journalist Privat Rutazibwa, was published. It provides an alternative take to the portrayal of Rusesabagina's actions as seen in the film Hotel Rwanda.
Rusesabagina has consistently denied allegations put forward by the Rwandan government accusing Rusesabagina of helping the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a Rwandan Hutu rebel group. In a 2010 interview with CNN, Rusesabagina said: "I have sent no money to terrorists... He is not only lying, but lying with bad logic... This is pure and simple fabrication from Kigali."
Rusesabagina stated in a public lecture at the University of Michigan on March 27, 2014, that he has chosen to forgive Kagame, as this is the only way that Rwanda can move past the genocide.