 Paul vs Paul… Rusesabagina’s book is banned from bookstores in Kigali. In the Mille Collines Hotel, only the president’s biography is for sale. |
By Raymond Frenken
(EUX.TV) — When on assignment last November to cover the parliamentary assembly of the ACP and EU in Kigali, I was fortunate enough to stay at the Des Mille Collines Hotel in Rwanda, a hotel with a story. It’s this very hotel that was made famous in the Hollywood movie ‘Hotel Rwanda.’
The 2004 United Artists movie is based on the story of Paul Rusesabagina as manager of the hotel at the time of the 1994 genocide. Rusesabagina used his position and people-skills to save 1268 people from the mass killings between the Hutu’s and the Tutsi’s.
The real ‘Mille Collines’ is not the same as the one in the movie. ‘Hotel Rwanda’ was recorded in a former Kigali hospital which now hosts a replica of the Mille Collines pool. The look and feel of the ‘real’ hotel is that of a 3-star hotel. The one in the movie is more like a 4-star accommodation.
But most striking is the total absence of references to the historic act of heroism that took place here. Not even a sign or a picture.
More than a decade after the slaughter, one would think that Rusesabagina’s story is a ‘positive’ one for Rwanda, if such a thing can be said. Good for its image and international standing. Ultimately good for tourism and business. Not forgetting though that the movie is a powerful reminder of the brutal killing of approximately 800,000 people.
Yet the opposite is true. In Rwanda, Paul ‘Ru’ nowadays is persona-non-grata. Some say he’s even on a death-list. The president, Paul Kagame, who led the rebels that came into Rwanda from Uganda in 1994, certainly sees him as an enemy. Bookstores in Kigali are not selling his book ‘An Ordinary Man.’ And ‘Hotel Rwanda’ is nowhere to be found in the country.
Watch Raymond Frenken’s interview with Paul Rusesabagina:
Reading local newspapers in Kigali last November, it was stunning to see how the government-controlled media write about Paul.
The ‘New Times’ newspaper in Kigali describes him in an 16 Nov. editorial as a “liar”, “so-called hero”, a man with a “shallow background’ and someone with a “hidden agenda.” Other stories in ‘official’ Rwandan media strike a similar tone. Anyone reading Rwandan publications on the web can check for himself – beware of CIA-inspired propaganda techniques.
At the November ACP meeting, members of the Rwandan parliament quickly walked away when I asked about these allegations against Rusesabagina and about the movie.
An official of an NGO in Rwanda got angry with me for having mentioned Rusesabagina’s name while the camera was running. It leaves me confused. Is Rwanda really the ‘democracy’ that it pretends to be?
The few people in Rwanda that are not afraid to talk about him echo what Kagame has said about him. That Paul Ru is “too full of himself.” That Hotel Rwanda was not the real story about the genocide. I wonder if Kagame might privately be envious of the international attention generated by Hotel Rwanda.
If the guy is wrong, why not just say so?
Later that night, I send an email to the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation to shed their light on this. “Greetings from the Mille Collines Hotel,” my email starts. Within five minutes I get a response. “Oh my God. There is so much you should know,” I’m told. An exchange of emails follows.
Paul happens to be in Brussels that week – he lives there with his family. And less than one hour after touching down at the end of that week at Zaventem Airport, I get to meet him, together with Robert Krueger, a former US Senator who was US ambassador to Burundi between 1994 and 1996, for an interview.
Krueger has recently published a book on the situation in Burundi, “From Bloodshed to Hope in Burundi,” in which Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame is not mentioned very favorably.
My contact details also are passed on to people who know Rusesabagina well, some in Rwanda, others elsewhere in Africa, the US and Europe, as refugees.
I still get emails with horrific stories. Children whose Hutu parents still haven’t gotten a decent funeral. One girl described to me how her mother in 1994 was cut to pieces and thrown into the toilet. It took until 2004 to get an official burial. Now she’s sick and she does not have access to medicines because her mother was a Hutu.
People infected by the HIV/Aids virus only get access to medicines if they’re friendly to Kagame’s regime, I’m told. It’s difficult to verify, but our driver in Kigali tells me he gets his HIV/Aids drugs for free. He’s a Tutsi.
It seems as if the genocide continues, and that Aids is used as one of the new weapons.
Under Paul Kagame, Rwanda “is the best model for a dictatorship in the world,” Rusesabagina says in the interview.
There’s even a secret police, like the dreaded Securitate in 1960s and 1970s Rumania, or the Stasi in former East Germany. Not many people outside Rwanda know about its existence. There’s no information about it on the Internet.
Paul says in Rwanda this unit is called the ‘local defense forces.’ For every twenty homes, a special officer is assigned with the task of finding out everything that happens here. If the ‘LDF’ discovers behavior or an attitude that’s not in line with what the government wants, it’s possible for them to make people disappear.
Of course Rwanda has made great strides in the years since the genocide. Visiting members of parliaments were impressed last November what they were shown. Thanks to the ‘Gachacha’ grass roots justice system, some justice has been done.
But below the surface, differences between Tutsi and Hutu remain evident. The hatred has not disappeared.
The two genocide memorials in Kigali that I visited both host exhibitions that immediately start off making comparisons with genocides in Poland, Yugoslavia, Cambodia, even before the story of the Rwanda genocide is told.
It’s almost as if they are saying: “Don’t worry. It’s a normal thing. It also happens in other parts of the world. We should not feel guilty about this.”
Of course the exhibits are happy to blame Belgium – Rwanda is a former Belgian colony – and the Catholic church. For nearly a decade, they actively encouraged divisions between Hutu’s and Tutsi’s, saying the later were smarter because they had more cows. Tutsi’s as a result got the better jobs.
Below the surface, the comparison with a volcano is tempting, especially in a country that hosts a beautiful national park with a series of active volcano’s.
Rwanda’s political volcano certainly remains active.
It’s not going to erupt soon, but on the longer term, a new eruption, a new genocide is to be expected as long as one group continues to dominate the other one. There was a genocide in 1994, but there also has been one during the 1960s.
Paul’s call for a Truth and Reconciliation Committee for Rwanda should not be ignored. Kagame’s regime likes to tell the rest of the world that all has been sorted out. That there’s no need for international involvement. But too many questions remain unanswered, and too many reports of injustice are coming out to accept that official position.
Given these stories – many of which are supported by official reports from organizations like Human Rights Watch - the international community needs to keep Rwanda on its humanitarian and democratic radar screen. If the country is allowed to drift, then we in the ‘north’ will have failed again.
Members of the European Parliament tell me they feel Rwanda is on the right track. But they did not know about ‘the sequel’ to Hotel Rwanda. They have yet to talk to Paul Rusesabagina.
