Lantos award to Rusesabagina an insult to Genocide survivors

Survivors of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi are enraged and disappointed that Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, nominated Paul Rusesabagina for this year’s Lantos Human Rights Prize. The award, to be handed out on November 16, is a manifestation of just how Genocide deniers and revisionists continue to dupe an unsuspecting world in the most cunning and opportunistic of ways. Rusesabagina continues to ride on the back of the success of the award-winning Hotel Rwanda film, a movie laced with both fact and fiction, but which he has exploited to mask the truth about the events at the Hotel des Mille Collines, during the Genocide. Rusesabagina claims he put his own life in danger when he saved about 1,200 Tutsi at the hotel. Yet survivors have spoken of how Rusesabagina extorted money from them in exchange for refuge, and how he turned away those that could not pay. Genocide survivors and eye-witnesses also attribute the survival of some Tutsi at the hotel to several other factors, rather than Rusesabagina’s perceived kindness. They included the fact that the Belgian owners of the hotel – Sabena – put both Paris and Brussels under pressure to protect its property, the French military had a communication facility on the hotel’s fifth floor, and that extremists were considering using the refugees as a bargaining chip in the wake of an RPA attack. Most importantly, Rusesabagina has been associated with terrorist group, FDLR. As one of the financiers of the group based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rusesabagina is indirectly supporting terrorism. Honouring such an individual who has lied his way to fame would be an insult and betrayal to the survivors of the Genocide and humanity as well. Ends