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Want to commemorate the 1994 Rwandan Genocide? @FreetheHero (Paul Rusesabagina)
Twenty-seven years ago today, President Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down as he returned from peace talks in Tanzania with the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). This event sparked the genocide where at least 800,000 people were butchered by people they had known all of their lives. People picked up machetes and killed friends, family, and coworkers.
Paul Rusesabagina was a hotel manager for the Sabine Hotel franchise and worked at the Hotel des Milles Collines. He didn’t set out to be a hero. He has said that the question shouldn’t be why he acted the way he did but why did others not? As a result of his actions, depicted in the film Hotel Rwanda where he was played by Don Cheadle, 1,268 people survived that 10 horrible weeks in 1994. If that does not make him a hero, what does?
Today, as President Paul Kagame oversees the genocide reenactments that are held every year, Rusesabagina is not sitting alongside his country-mate. He sits in a jail on trumped-up charges. His real crime is criticizing Kagame. Today, criticizing Kagame or other high-level government officials is a crime. A guilty verdict carries a sentence of five years in prison. Kagame critics don’t often see the inside of a court. More than a few have died under suspicious circumstances.