As the Kinyarwanda adage: “the Truth passes across the fire without burning”; Rusesabagina no longer impresses any body

In our last delivery on Paul Rusesabagina’s endeavor to win public support for his now well established but ill-conceived political agenda, we clearly demonstrated how a British judge concurred with our earlier exposure of the self-advertised Hollywood film hero. Since he started using his ill-earned fame to rewrite the Rwandan history in a manner intended to perpetuate the genocide ideology with the hope of reassembling different extremists nostalgic of the past regimes, we relentlessly warned the public about Rusesabagina’s falsehoods. We traced his background, exposed his greedy character, his long time intimacy with the genocidaires, his cynicism in trying to illicitly gain money by presenting himself as humanitarian and an African “Schindler”; we have analyzed his discourses, writings and interviews all around the western world and unearthed the man’s real self and his illusionary political ambitions. Well! As the saying goes, “you can fool some people sometime of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time”! With our contribution and others’ interventions whether on the net, in newspapers and other medias, but most outstandingly the Hotel des Mille Collines’ survivors, those Rusesabagina pretends to have saved, who came out very strongly to denounce the man’s usurpation of fame and describing in great details how he traded their dear lives for money and threatened some of these poor individuals of throwing them out to the killers if they did not pay. All this he did in spite of written instructions by the hotel owners not to do so, an evidence which the British judge put forward to conclude Rusesabagina was an inverted liar whose words could not be trusted in a court of justice, and we could add, anywhere else, Paul Rusesabagina appeared as what he really is: an unfortunate produce of the old Parmehutu ideologies that led to the 1994 genocide who continue to work together with other FDLR networks for the accomplishment of their unfinished “umulimo”(work) as they used to trivialize the genocide atrocities. In the above mentioned article, we rejoiced that the public had finally started to see the light and were no longer easily abused by a man who, as some survivor once said “ is so selfish and mean that he traded Rwanda’s history, preferred self gratification at the expense of giving the real picture of the catastrophe that befell Rwanda, and how unfortunate it was that when survivors come out to correct this embarrassment, they are summarily dismissed and referred to as “Rwandan politicians and journalists tarnishing Rusesabagina’s image...” On 19 June, the Chicago public also got to know of the usurper, who was preparing to come into their walls, and spread his venomous utterances against the current regime in Rwanda and in the hope of departing with some of their hard-earned dollars. The British judge’s conclusion that Rusesabagina’s submissions in Dr Bajinya’s case as “wild and general allegations without any supporting proof…” seems to have been another important blow to his smokescreen strategies. Indeed, in the much advertised 19 June 2008 discussion pompously titled “Beyond Hotel Rwanda: Finding Real Peace in Africa’s Great Lakes Region”, witnesses tell us that Rusesabagibna’s hopes and most probably those of his Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation Executive director, Christen Dyer, who organized the event in a bid to showcase HRRF to the Chicago community and launch a ground for its funds solicitation, were unquestionably shattered. Here is what the witnesses told us about the event: As expected and as he has now accustomed us to, Rusesabagina went on with his diatribes alleging among others that “… even before colonialism Hutus were slaves and that the 1959 genocide crimes were a revolution against the Tutsi and their Belgian allies…that in 1990 the Tutsi invaded Rwanda and …started killing people in Byumba recruiting their sons into the army and killing them…” and other such old rubbish. His words were echoed by his old friend Ambassador Krueger who advocated for impunity saying that “…justice should be abandoned and people pursue the line of “Truth and Reconciliation” because of the huge number of suspects and suggesting that …people should be brought to a table and after confession they should be pardoned…”, as simple as that one could ask! It is bewildering how these otherwise supposedly knowledgeable people can be so remote from current realities to the point of playing down a crime of such magnitude. It also shows how little consideration they accord to the victims while parading with genocide apologists like the Rusesabaginas. The Chicago community was so unimpressed by the panelists, namely Ambassadors Robert Krueger and Robert Flatten, David Zarembka of the African Great Lakes Institute. Reliably, to the organizers’ dismay and disappointment, the conference was only attended by around 53 people that included students of the Loyola University whom Professor Brian Endless of the same university had supposedly in good faith managed to convince to attend. Most revealing though, was that a packet of envelopes soliciting donations displayed on a table in the conference room nobody took them. They were also desperately distributed during the presentation but people continued to ignore them. HRRF Executive director Christen Dyer had expected to collect $150 from each individual who he hoped would attend an HRRF fundraising dinner after the conference but had to shamefully renounce it and a miserable number of twenty two people who followed them to a nearby restaurant, a big part being Rusesabagina’s family members, had to console themselves with a cocktail of some wines and snacks instead of the publicized dinner. Even then none paid nether the 150 US $ nor gave any contributions although the same fundraising envelopes were laid there. Finally, if he is still capable of learning something, Paul Rusesabagina should get the lesson well and be content with the much he has managed to blackmail and ‘extort’ from unsuspecting audiences since the release of the “Hotel Rwanda” movie, and now that his dubious motives have been uncovered, return to his transport business that we are told are prosperous and be a true “ordinary man” he pretended to be. If not, let him be prepared to see his star wane into oblivion as quick as it has risen. As the French saying goes “A bon entendeur, salut!” And may again all the good people say: Never Again. Contact: muhetofe@gmail.com