Everyone wants to hear the story of a modern-day hero, but who can endure hearing of the demanding circumstances that force the occasion of heroism? For those of us in the West who are protected from the terrible reality of injustice and suffering that is the daily lot of many in African countries, it’s too easy to fast-forward to the happy ending of the story.
Paul Rusesabagina is doing everything he can to remind us of the consequences of inaction and that for all-too many, both in Rwanda and places such as Northern Uganda and Burundi, there has been no happy ending.
The man whose quiet, diplomatic courage inspired the movie Hotel Rwanda, ended a four-day speaking tour in Canada with a conference at Concordia last Wednesday night. Ruesesabagina, at one time the manager of the Mille-Collines Hotel in Kigali, chose to stay and protect over 1,200 Tutsi and Hutu refugees against repeated attacks from the Hutu Power rebels during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. He spoke in detail about the 76-day siege they endured, recounting how he called every influential person he knew for help and buying off the militia with booze and luxury items for protection, while in the city streets, over 800,000 Rwandans were ultimately murdered.
Rusesabagina described the first time soldiers came and demanded to evacuate people from the hotel. He and his wife and children were among those who were to be evacuated, but he decided at the last minute he couldn’t leave the people who had entrusted themselves to his care. His family and the other evacuees were waylaid by the rebels on the road to safety, and his wife was beaten so badly that, after he carried her back to the hotel, she stayed in bed for weeks.
While Rusesabagina used his contacts and diplomatic skills to buy time for his refugees, the biggest difficulty for him was the reality of being ignored by the international community. When the genocide started, over 2000 NATO peacekeepers were removed, while those left behind weren’t allowed to shoot to defend anyone, and only the foreigners were taken to safety.
At the press conference before the main event on Wednesday night, Paul stressed, “the international community abandoned us. They closed their eyes, they stopped their ears, they turned their backs to what was happening. We have to make them understand that what happened in Rwanda is not finished. At that time (when we were abandoned) I was angry, bitter. even those words are too soft, they are not strong enough to describe how I felt when they took away the foreigners with their pets, and left us behind.”
In spite of the heroism that saved every one of the Tutsis and moderate Hutus at the hotel, Rusesabagina considers himself an “Ordinary Man,” which is the title of the book he’s releasing this April. In an exhortation that won a massive round of applause from the 1050-strong audience in the packed auditorium, he spoke bluntly about what an army of “ordinary people” could do.
“If need be, go down to the streets and demonstrate. Apartheid is over in South Africa because of your courage, because of your mothers and fathers, who, 15 years ago, went down to the streets and fought with all their strength against apartheid.
“Join words to action. What you see in Hotel Rwanda is our everyday life – most African countries are killing fields. Africa needs your help, needs you to raise awareness. Get up, talk to your leaders – remind them of their responsibility, because behind each and every African dictatorship, there is always a superpower propagating the regime.”
Jean-Paul Gahunde, originally from Ethiopia and now a political science student at Concordia, was 16 when the violence erupted in his adopted land. He escaped to the hotel to nurse the four gunshot wounds he received, hiding from anyone who looked official because he had been told not to trust anyone. It wasn’t until he saw the movie Hotel Rwanda that he realized that Rusesabagina was responsible for saving his life.
He shared his story after Rusesabagina left the stage, and said in tribute, “I believe that Paul found his calling when he was helping people. Of the 80 per cent of Rwandans that were killing people, there was at least one person who was thinking about saving a couple of them. If we had 10 people like Paul, maybe we would have saved more. I just want to thank him that he followed his heart.”
Gahunde encouraged his fellow students, “we, as Canadians, come from a minority of our own original people, so don’t tell me that you cannot do anything about your own people… We speak about the genocide in Rwanda, but something is happening right now in Darfur, in Columbia, in Ethiopia.”
The event was organized by SHOUT – Students Helping Others Understand Tolerance, the African Student Association (ASA), Amnesty International Concordia (AIC) and Hillel Concordia.
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