Reader Rwanda Rusesabagina

Paul Rusesabagina, the imposter humanitarian, has set up
a foundation called Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation (HRRF).
This organization ostensibly aims at providing assistance to the Genocide survivors.
However, the foundation is as big a hoax as defining Rusesabagina as a humanitarian.
It may well provide Rusesabagina and his kin with assistance,
but one has yet to meet a survivor of Genocide in Rwanda
the foundation has helped.

HOTEL RWANDA HERO HOAX

Rusesabagina's critics also accuse him of trying to destabilize the current government,
which helped end the genocide in 1994.
A group of students and faculty members said that
presenting only Rusesabagina's view did not meet standards of
"transparency, accountability and evidence-based education."

This time I would like to talk about 'humanitarian' Paul Rusesabagina, a man who has dramatically become inconsistent with his stories.

When I watched 'Hotel Rwanda' for the first time, I really liked the man, because when almost every Hutu had joined the killing frenzy, he was bribing the killers to spare the lives of those around him. Some people have disputed the facts in the movie, but for the sake of argument, let us assume the story he sold to Hollywood was correct.

This man is going around the world now preaching the opposite and this has left me confused. He says when RPF shot down the president, Hutus started killing Tutsis and Tutsis started killing Hutus. This is very opposite from the story he sold to the makers of the hotel Rwanda movie. In the movie he shows that Hutu Power genocidal trend was well on the rise, his driver Jube was stopped and nearly killed by militias and he was spared after Paul Rusesabagina flashed around Interahamwe flag.

Also the story he sold to the makers of the movie shows that the leader of Interahamwe George Rutaganda had imported machetes from China and when he goes to buy beer from him, his staff opens a case full of machetes which left Rutaganda embarrassed. This shows that genocide was well prepared and it did not depend on the downing of the president.

Rusesabagina also alleges that RPF killed as much as interahamwe! But in the story he sold, it is shown that RPF was oasis of safety. That's why when Mille Collines became unsafe, with militias entering at will, Rusesabagina and all those with him were evacuated behind RPF lines. And you could see a smile on Rusesabagina's face when they crossed the front line, he said: "It's rebels!!!.... We are safe....!" and all people jubilated.

In his book 'An Ordinary Man' he says that when he was in Kigali, he saw some people, who were close to him, who had been good, were moving around with their hands soaked in blood killing people. Yet to date he has not volunteered to go to Arusha to testify against the killers he witnessed!

Rusesabagina is a strange character. Maybe he is being used as a front man for genocidaires?

Yes, the movie HOTEL RWANDA (aside from being a phony-baloney mush story) does portray some important truths and is in fact a form of indictment against some specific members of the Hutu Power, ie that leader of the Interahamwe and others Rusesabagina is on friendly terms with in connection with running the hotel and saving Tutsis who've managed to get there (most of whom in real life were well-connected elites, not the general run-of-the mill masses portrayed in the movie). See THE REAL HOTEL RWANDA

That one scene you mention, ie the stockpile of machetes from China (millions of which were distributed around the country even BEFORE the Hutu soldiers, militia and masses were given the go ahead - after the president's plane was conveniently shot down - to start using them on every Tutsi they came across) is blatant proof the genocide was pre-planned.

And that closing scene where Rusesabagina gets on the bus with the Hotel Rwanda refugees and is taken to safety behind RPF lines was truthfully portrayed, but not everyone in the audience knows that "rebels" meant RPF - and was left intentionally vague for that reason (giving the Tutsi army and General Kagame - now president - the least amount of mention possible).

But as regards to 'what came first' - the making of Rusesabagina into a Hollywood Hutu hotel hero so that he could then be used as a mouthpiece to disseminate Hutu Power genocide ideology OR his being chosen for that purpose AFTER he became a Hollywood Hutu hotel hero - I don't know, but I suspect the former.

I haven't read Rusesabagina's book AN ORDINARY MAN yet (but will when it hits the remainder-table and is dirt-cheap) but its premise that any 'ordinary' man could have done what he did - ie got away with 'just saying no' when ordered to kill Tutsis - is a blatant perversion of fact. In almost ALL cases, Hutus who said "No" to killing Tutsis (even their wives and children) were then themselves killed, unless they were someone special - like Rusesabagina must have been (and for their purposes, still is). See HOTEL HERO NOT ORDINARY.

PS - Some people are starting to get wise to Rusesabagina's falsification of Rwanda's history through his Hollywood movie and speeches and are protesting at his venues.

Paul Rusesabagina, a Rwandan exile who sheltered more than 1,200 civilians as a hotel manager, gave his account of his experiences during the Rwandan genocide at the State of the Race speech Tuesday in Glenn Memorial Auditorium [Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia]. In his speech titled “Hotel Rwanda: A Lesson Yet to Be Learned,” Rusesabagina questioned whether the world has learned to pay attention to genocides and exhorted students to take action. Rusesabagina, whose story inspired the 2004 movie “Hotel Rwanda,” began saving lives the first day of the genocide when he took 20 people into his home and shielded them from the Hutu militia.

But Rusesabagina’s speech was met with protest from those who believe that his role has been exaggerated and misleading. Protestors stationed outside Glenn handed out fliers prior to the event, promoting a follow-up discussion organized by the Rollins School of Public Health in November.

Rusesabagina shared how he remembers exactly where he was and what he was doing when his wife Tatiana called him on April 6, 1994, just as Americans remember where they were on Sept. 11, 2001. She told him the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi had been killed and that the country was in disarray. Since the 15th century, the Tutsi and Hutu tribes have fought for control of Rwanda. Tensions continued to escalate until 1994, when the Hutu presidents of Rwanda and Burundi were assassinated and the genocide began.

He told how he used his verbal skills with the Hutu soldiers and convinced them not to kill the refugees by offering to pay them off with cash back at his hotel, Milles Collines. “Words can save and words can kill,” he said.

Because there was no security present when he got to the hotel, Rusesabagina worked to have five officers from the Rwanda National Police protect the hotel, something they did until everyone was evacuated two months later. He told of the difficult life in the hotel, describing how there was no electricity or running water. The refugees rationed out the swimming pool water, taking a few drops at the beginning of the day and a few at the end just to survive.

On April 23, 1994, Rusesabagina was confronted by the Hutu militia, who gave him 30 minutes to release the refugees before they would start shooting. After phoning contacts around the world for help, including the White House, the United Nations and the Peace Corps, he finally got the help he needed from the assistant general of the police. Rusesabagina said the assistant general saved their lives.

He said the toughest decision he had to make was when his family’s name was on a list of people allowed to evacuate. He chose to stay behind with those not on the list while his wife and four children were rushed to safety. “My conscience wouldn’t let me leave,” Rusesabagina said. He said that he does not want to be thought of as a saint or a hero. He declared that he did not decide to risk his own life; instead he said that “God decided for me.” This sacrifice was “for nothing” as the caravan of evacuees was brought back to the hotel after being fired upon.

Rusesabagina described how at times he relied on the help of others to stay alive. The general chief of staff warned off the Hutu militia at one point, threatening that he would shoot them if they did not leave. On June 18, 1994, roughly two months after the ordeal began, 1,260 refugees were evacuated from Rusesabagina’s hotel. But when the genocide was over in mid-July, between 800,000 and 1 million Rwandan civilians had been killed.

Rusesabagina urged the audience to think about whether the world has learned its lesson after vowing never to let an atrocity like the Holocaust happen ever again. “‘Never again’ turned into again and again,” he said, describing the continuing genocide in Rwanda and Darfur. College freshman Zia Johnson found Rusesabagina an interesting speaker. "You never get to hear the actual story. You just get the Hollywood version,” Johnson said.

During the question and answer session following his speech, Rusesabagina responded to one of the more prevalent accusations concerning the money he allegedly accepted in return for the shelter and security offered at his hotel. "I didn’t charge any money to anyone,” he said.

Rusesabagina’s critics also accuse him of trying to destabilize the current government, which helped end the genocide in 1994. A flier issued by a group of students and faculty members took issue with the format of the State of Race event, saying that presenting only Rusesabagina’s view did not meet standards of “transparency, accountability and evidence-based education.” The group, led by Professor of Global Health Susan Allen, is trying to organize an event for November which will feature Andrew Young, a professor from the School of Policy Studies at the Georgia State University. Young, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, produced the documentary “Rwanda Rising” about the genocide. The flier also promises appearances by James Kimonyo, the Rwandan ambassador to the United States, and genocide survivors from the Milles Collines hotel. “The speakers will not be paid, so unlike the funding role departments and center sponsors played for the Rusesabagina event, the School of Public Health’s sponsorship of the Andrew Young event is academic and intellectual,” Allen wrote in an e-mail to the Wheel. The follow-up event has not been definitively scheduled yet. Allen wrote that Young has four available dates in November, so the group will try to program the event accordingly.

Paul Rusesabagina, the imposter humanitarian, has set up a foundation called Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation (HRRF). This organization ostensibly aims at providing assistance to the Genocide survivors. However, the foundation is as big a hoax as the concept defining Rusesabagina, as a humanitarian. It may well provide Rusesabagina and his kin with assistance, but one has yet to meet a survivor of Genocide in Rwanda the foundation has helped.

In any case, everybody knows there has never been such a thing as Hotel Rwanda in the manner Rusesabagina portrays it. It is a fictitious Hollywood creation, designed as an attention grabbing sales gimmick. Rusesabagina, by naming his organisation Hotel Rwanda foundation has decided to walk the very fine line between reality and fraud. Hotel Rwanda the movie is fiction premised on pure concoctions aimed at self enrichment by the imposter humanitarian. What is objectionable is the attempt by Rusesabagina and others to force it down our throats as reality in their quest for serving their egos and other personal interests.

One has only to consult the organisation's website just to see how the man is a wicked liar. He wickedly plays with the website visitors' emotions by presenting them a desperate situation in Rwanda based on unsubstantiated numbers and percentages: "With as many as 500,000 orphans, Rwanda has one of the highest per-capita orphan populations in the world. Many of the children born of women raped during the Genocide have grown up with no fathers and now live on the edges of society. They lack access to basic food, clothing, or shelter and they quickly fall prey to those seeking to exploit their condition to perpetuate further racial conflict and unrest," he rambles on. And in self aggrandizement he tries to sell the moon to his audience by giving out false promises he knows he does not intend to fulfill:

"To fight this cycle, HRRF provides financial assistance for Rwanda's orphans. Through the help of orphanages and schools in highly devastated areas within Rwanda, HRRF will grant funds to administer appropriate services focusing on education, vocational training and other social support mechanisms," he continues.

From there he announces the colors: "To give life. To give help. To give hope. People need resources. Help us help ourselves." And he goes on praising himself with no trace of humility: "That is how I started helping people," he said while speaking in Dimnent Memorial Chapel some time back.

But so far, vulnerable Genocide survivors have received no single penny of the amassed funds from the foundation. His statement is only a move of giving false statistics in order to amass money for his personal interests as he unashamedly tries to raise his popularity based on crafty humanitarianism appeals.

He has been touring the world fundraising for this so called charity of his. However, there is no single record where this foundation has assisted in any way any of the orphans and widows in Rwanda. As a matter of fact, let us recall here that several funding institutions have been asking Rusesabagina to account for the money they gave him for his so called charities.

Indeed, from reliable sources, for the second time on May 4 2007, the Conrad Hilton Foundation requested Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation to give details on how the $100,000 grant given to them was used. The previous request had been done in December 2006 and no answer to that effect has ever been submitted. They also rightly suspect that the money raised might end up buying weapons to destabilize Rwanda and the entire Great Lakes Region again, now that he has embarked on a futile attempt to win political power. And as if this was not bad enough, in his various speeches and presentations, Rusesabagina has launched a systematic campaign of negation of the Tutsi Genocide preferring to use such ambiguous terms like, "war crimes," "terrible massacres," indeed in total contradiction even of the message given the Hotel Rwanda fiction movie.

This indeed is characteristic and typical of many Genocide sympathisers and perpetrators. He has gone on to misrepresent the Rwandan Genocide and history; yet he is fully aware of the systematic plans of extermination directed against the Tutsi right from the 1959-1966, 1973, culminating into the 1994 holocaust. It clearly does not square with logic that the "hero" who saved innocent lives has of late turned into the official mouth piece and spokesperson for the ideology of negation, blackmail and malicious propaganda. That he should use his underserved fame to enrich himself and his kin, spread misinformation and incite sentiments of divisionism and hate among Rwandans, is however not too surprising to those that know Rusesabagina, the person, before 1994 and during the Genocide.

He has dined with and even defended many renowned genocidaires like General Augustine Bizimungu, now undergoing trial in Arusha, because he shares the same ideology with them and only never killed those that were in the Mille Colline Hotel with him because he was extorting them, even though against the written instructions of the owners of the Hotel (a copy of which we have) and as attested by the then manager of the SN Brussels himself.