Rusesabagina propagates ill-fated political manoeuvres

By Charles Mugabo Paul Rusesabagina’s Hotel Rwanda movie was intended to awaken everybody’s awareness of the Genocide. At the same time, it was to differentiate the Hutu that were involved in the Genocide from the other Rwandan citizens while paying due tribute to heroic acts of some people. But, as time went by, after winning glory, Rusesabagina started his political machinations, synonymous with Genocide plotting, using the acquired name through Hotel Rwanda movie. Instead of teaching reconciliation, he chose the revisionist route which he often punctuates with a mention of Darfur, just to confuse the International community and portray himself as an ardent advocate for Human Rights. How can he be that yet he preaches hatred and is carrying on with the same ideology that caused death for over one million innocent lives for what they were? To ensure that he continues milking the “sacred cow” in the name of Genocide, Rusesabagina is trying to convince members of the International Community that a second genocide is in the offing in Rwanda by the current leadership. This is wishful thinking by a man that erroneously was referred to as a hero in the movie. Rusesabagina pretends to support 500 child-genocide survivors yet he is busy planning with other renowned genocidaires to continue with the Genocide. He holds conferences around the world, which are derailments from the initial mission which may eventually break many people’s hearts, especially the Western youths who thought, had got a true humanitarian hero. Rusesabagina distorts history in order to better develop afterward, the denial of Genocide, by protecting some Hutus who perpetrated it. For instance, he explains that the Tutsis’ going into exile in 1959 was merely fortuitous because the so called “Hutu Revolution” had had an objective of expelling Belgian colonisers and that Tutsis were merely victims of the fact that they used to collaborate with these colonisers. Such remarks are actually a matter of intellectual dishonesty, because it is everybody’s knowledge that it is the Belgian colonisers who actually played an important role for Tutsis going into exile for having dared to claim for an immediate independence of Rwanda. This “Revolution” was the coloniser’s action in favour of Parmehutu (literary meaning: a party for the Hutus), an ethnic political party which had been in power from 1960 up to 1973. The distortion of history by Rusesabagina shows his bad faith and concretely proves his negativist and sectarian intentions. One cannot talk about the Genocide while putting aside previous historic events and processes that led to it. Rusesabagina says nothing about the 1959-1966 massacres, yet he must be aware that the regime of President Grégoire Kayibanda was heavily involved and is accused of being a Genocide actor since then. He surely has a good knowledge of the said period and if logic was to rule, he would have better understanding of elements and processes that underlie the planning and development towards the 1994 Genocide. Rusesabagina also attempts to justify the 1973 massacres of Tutsis and exodus of refugees through the bloody ethnic events that occurred in Burundi in 1972. Despite some similarities in the ethnic mix, Rwanda and Burundi are two different states with different sovereign powers and history. They are two different populations, each having its particular vision, its choices and its history. Rusesabagina puts no efforts in demonstrating that the Genocide was prepared and planned by the previous regimes, since the 1960’s. He also tries to undermine the Genocide by likening it to war crimes, to massacres of political nature and other crimes. This is very typical of the negativist ideologists. In his speeches, he tries to cleanse the genocidaires while continuing to diabolize Tutsi victims. He even goes further and acts as if he was the lawyer of some of planners of the Genocide, such as General Augustin Bizimungu who is known for his extremism and his position during the 1994 Genocide for which he is being tried by the international criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania. Rusesabagina even says he is ready to go and defend General Bizimungu. Cognisant of his recent popularity, he wants to intoxicate his audiences and exonerate his friends and comrades in arms, who were involved in the Genocide. Rusesabagina is touring the world saying that 50 per cent of Genocide suspects are innocent and belong to the Hutu elite, and this is eventually aimed at concluding that the present regime in Rwanda is perpetrating an ‘intellectual genocide against Hutus.’ His remarks also conform to the line of his political activism that we have noticed in the recent past. Being an opponent of the present regime in Rwanda, he takes advantage of his popularity to libel it using the ethnicity card which in the past was used by the perpetrators of the Genocide. Living outside the country for more than ten years, Rusesabagina does not even want to know anything about the progress in the country. He wishes away reliable figures published by well known International organizations such as the World Bank, the IMF, UNESCO, UNDP, UNICEF, and FINUAP, hoping his movie-earned heroism will help him erase facts as they are and change the history of Rwanda in the direction he wants it to.

Opinions

Rusesabagina propagates ill-fated political manoeuvres