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Between April and July, 1994, Rwanda became the scene of one of the darkest and most nightmarish atrocities in human history. In the midst of a sectarian civil war between the nation's Hutu extremist government and a mostly-Tutsi rebel group, the Hutu government turned on the ethnic Tutsi minority and mercilessly and systematically slaughtered over 1,000,000 innocent people in a genocide that left the entire world in muted horror.
Not since the Holocaust had the world seen such devastating atrocities committed by man against his fellow man. Not since the Holocaust had the nightmarish scenes of mass extermination been so starkly thrust upon the world. The pictures of hundreds of thousands of hacked corpses, strewn along the roads and burnt villages of Rwanda, left an irremovable stain on the almanac of human history.
Yet, out of the atrocities, the world also witnessed the true heights of human courage and compassion. Individual people - repulsed by the genocide they saw unfolding in front of them - took it upon themselves to do everything in their power to save lives. They showed the world what it meant to be human. Out of the darkest chapter of human history, they showed us all what true humanity and true bravery looks like.
One of these people was Paul Rusesabagina - a Hutu moderate and house manager of the luxury Hotel Milles Collines in the Rwandan capital city of Kigali. Rusesabagina was caught in the middle of the genocide in April, 1994, and even though his Hutu ethnicity mostly protected him from harm, he would risk his own safety countless times to protect people he never knew.
As the brutal Interahamwe death squads rampaged through the city, hunting down and massacring Tutsis by the thousands, Rusesabagina used his authority as a house manager to shelter hundreds of Tutsi civilians and moderate Hutus in the Hotel Milles Collines - countlessly risking his life to do so.
Hutu moderates were considered "race traitors" by the Hutu-extremist government and were targeted for extermination, and Rusesabagina himself was repeatedly threatened with death - sometimes at gunpoint - throughout the genocide. Through a combination of bribery, bluffing, political connections, and deception, he was able to ward off the Interahamwe militias and the Hutu-led government for over three months.
In the end, Rusesabagina was able to save over 1,200 lives, and when the Hutu-extremist government was finally toppled by the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in July, 1994, Rusesabagina was paraded as a national hero by the new Rwandan government. His story was later chronicled in the critically-acclaimed 2004 film Hotel Rwanda.
But Rusesabagina's time as a national hero would be short-lived. By 1996, as the new RPF government under Paul Kagame began to consolidate power, Rusesabagina began to grow critical of Kagame's authoritarian tendencies - such as censoring unfavorable press coverage of him, imprisoning political enemies on suspect charges, and even forcibly-disappearing his critics.
By 1996, Rusesabagina had made himself an enemy of the new Rwandan government, and he and his family left Rwanda for Europe after an attempt was made to assassinate him. But even after he left, Rusesabagina became the target of wild accusations put forth by the Rwandan government and its state-run media.
In August, 2020, as I covered previously, Rusesabagina was flown back to Rwanda under suspicious circumstances. It is widely believed that Rusesabagina was tricked into boarding a plane bound for Kigali, and was immediately arrested when he arrived. The Rwandan government charged him with a variety of offenses - including terrorism, murder, and kidnapping.
Just last September, almost a full year after he was arrested, Rusesabagina was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to 25 years in prison. And to say that the trial was unfair would be a gross understatement. In fact, the charges levied against Rusesabagina by the Rwandan government are some of the most outlandish, ludicrous, and nonsensical accusations I have ever heard in my life.
For starters, the Rwandan government has accused Rusesabagina of being a Hutu Power extremist who has supported the FDLR - an insurgent group in the Congo made up of former Interahamwe militants and Hutu extremists who fled Rwanda following the end of the 1994 genocide.
This accusation completely defies common sense and basic logic. The ideology of Hutu Power calls not only for the extermination of all Tutsis, but also the extermination of any Hutu who marries a Tutsi, befriends a Tutsi, does business with a Tutsi, or shows mercy to a Tutsi. Such tenets are spelled out in the very manifesto upheld by Hutu Power extremists in the FDLR - The Hutu Ten Commandments - widely seen as the defining manifesto of the Hutu Power movement.
The ten theses laid out in the Hutu Ten Commandments state the following (with emphasis added):
"1. Every Hutu should know that a Tutsi woman, whoever she is, works for the interest of her Tutsi ethnic group. As a result, we shall consider a race traitor any Hutu who:
* marries a Tutsi woman
* employs a Tutsi woman as a concubine
* employs a Tutsi woman as a secretary or takes her under protection
2. Every Hutu should know that our Hutu daughters are more suitable and conscientous in their role as woman, wife, and mother of the family. Are they not beautiful, good secretaries and more honest?
3. Hutu women, be vigilant and try to bring your husbands, brothers, and sons back to reason
4. Every Hutu should know that every Tutsi is dishonest in business. His only aim is the supremacy of his ethnic group. As a result, any Hutu who does the following is a traitor:
* makes a partnership with Tutsi in business
* invests his money or the government's money in a Tutsi enterprise
* lends or borrows money from a Tutsi
* gives favors to Tutsi in business (obtaining import licenses, bank loans, construction sites, public markers, etc.)
5. All strategic positions, political, administrative, economic, military and security should be entrusted only to Hutu
6. The education sector (school pupils, students, teachers) must be majority Hutu
7. The Rwandan Armed Forces should be exclusively Hutu. The experience of the October 1990 war has taught us a lesson. No member of the military shall marry a Tutsi.
8. The Hutu must stop having mercy on the Tutsi
9. The Hutu, wherever they are, must have unity and solidarity and be concerned with the fate of their Hutu brothers:
* The Hutu inside and outside Rwanda must constantly look for friends and allies for the Hutu cause, starting with their Hutu brothers
* The Hutu must constantly counteract Tutsi Propaganda
* The Hutu must be firm and vigilant against their common Tutsi enemy
10. The Hutu Social Revolution of 1959, the Referendum of 1961, and Hutu Ideology must be taught to every Hutu at every level. Every Hutu must spread this ideology widely. Any Hutu who persecutes his brother for having read, spread, and taught this ideology is a traitor."
Under the very tenets of Hutu Power ideology, Rusesabagina fails pretty much every single requirement of being a Hutu extremist. His actions - well documented and widely verified by eyewitnesses, international organizations, and both survivors and perpetrators of the genocide - are in complete contrast to the core tenets of Hutu Power ideology. Not only did Rusesabagina employ Tutsis at his place of business, shelter them from the Interahamwe, reject the ideology of Hutu extremism entirely, and refuse to turn over Tutsis to Hutu extremists, but he even married a Tutsi woman and had children with her!
In the eyes of actual Hutu extremists, all of this would make Rusesabagina a "race traitor" - a charge the Interahamwe itself levied against Rusesabagina during the genocide when they marked him and his family for death. The idea that Rusesabagina of all people is somehow a Hutu extremist - when he is the total antithesis of everything Hutu extremism stands for - is simply illogical and wholly incoherent nonsense.
Kagame's government has also levied accusations against Rusesabagina that he has been associated with armed groups opposed to the Rwandan government, and that the party he helped found, the Party for Democracy in Rwanda (PDR-Ihumure) had a militant wing known as the "National Liberation Front" (FLN). Kagame even points to Rusesabagina's acknowledgement of the FLN as an "armed wing" as proof that he is engaged in terroristic activities. The Rwandan government has additionally accused the FLN of engaging in terrorist attacks, including an assault on a passenger bus in Burundi in December, 2018, which resulted in two deaths.
While this may seem damning on its face, the truth is far more benign when given some context. In central Africa, it is not uncommon for political parties to have armed or even militant wings. Even Kagame's own RPF has an armed wing, so the existence of the FLN is by no means an anomaly for a political party in that area of the world, nor does it prove Rusesabagina's connection to terrorism.
Additionally, the attack in Burundi was indeed carried out by anti-Kagame extremists, but to accuse Rusesabagina of having any connection to that attack is a stretch, and what little evidence the Rwandan government has been able to produce that Rusesabagina had any role in directing acts of terrorism is problematic at best.
The only tangible evidence connecting Rusesabagina with the FLN unit that carried out the attack comes from self-proclaimed FLN spokesman Callixte Nsabimana, who pleaded guilty to carrying out the bus attack in 2019. In court, Nsabimana claimed that he had been instructed by Paul Rusesabagina to wage a guerrilla war against Kagame with the goal of ousting him from power.
However, it must be stated that Nsabimana was in Rwandan government custody at the time, and there have been credible allegations of systemic torture and abuse of POWs and dissidents by the Rwandan government. Such context must be considered when evaluating the veracity of these supposedly damning statements by Rusesabagina's alleged cohorts, and, for all intents and purposes, the Rwandan government has yet to establish any solid or direct connection between Rusesabagina and FLN-linked acts of terrorism.
Such acts of terrorism are not only unsubstantiated, but they are also in stark contrast to everything that Paul Rusesabagina has stood for throughout his life, as are any accusations by pro-Kagame media that he is a Hutu extremist or a denier of the Rwandan genocide. Rusesabagina has a long and well-documented history of being a staunch activist for human rights and nonviolence, and while his views on the Rwandan genocide have at times been controversial, they have never extended to denial or even minimization of the mass slaughter of the Tutsi.
All in all, the criminal accusations levied against Rusesabagina by the Rwandan government are shoddy at best and monumentally outlandish at worst. So what is the true motive behind this campaign against Rusesabagina and his character?
Well, I believe that it has far more to do with political rivalry than it does anything relating to terrorism, extremism, or genocide denial. Paul Rusesabagina has been a vocal critic of Paul Kagame and his government, accusing them of human rights violations and of arranging the forcible disappearances and even murders of political rivals and critics. Rusesabagina's prominence on the world stage as one of the most recognizable heroes of the Rwandan genocide makes him a particularly vocal threat to Kagame, and thus he would be a prime target by the regime.
The evidence for this is strong. In addition to the aforementioned flimsiness of the charges against Rusesabagina, it is also important to note that Rusesabagina was once hailed as a national hero by Paul Kagame and the RPF in the immediate aftermath of the genocide. The accusations against him only began to emerge around 1996, when Rusesabagina started becoming vocally critical of the RPF-led government and their alleged human rights violations in the concurrent Congo Wars.
The timing of these accusations is a big giveaway to the true motivations of the RPF government and Kagame. It wasn't until Rusesabagina became a critic of Kagame that he became, in the eyes of the government, an enemy of the state.
And this brings me to my final point. Rusesabagina is one of the people I most admire. The bravery and courage he has shown throughout his life is an inspiration for the world to behold. And while I do not agree with all of the criticisms he has levied against Kagame and the RPF, I also believe he has a fundamental human right to voice these criticisms without having to fear for his life or his freedom.
What the Rwandan government - and Paul Kagame - has done to Rusesabagina is nothing short of an absolute travesty of justice. The charges they accuse him of are nothing short of preposterous, and their characterizations of him are nothing short of laughable. Despite what Rwandan government media repeatedly asserts, this campaign is not about justice or national security. It is about settling old political scores and trying to silence a critic who is simply exercising his fundamental right to free expression.
It may surprise many people to learn that I also have a level of admiration for Paul Kagame. While the rest of the world stood by and did nothing, he almost singlehandedly brought a decisive end to the Rwandan genocide, overthrowing the Hutu-extremist government that was slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Tutsis. And, in the 25 years or so since his government took control of Rwanda, he has transformed the country from an impoverished, devastated, war-torn hellscape into an economic powerhouse that boasts a rapidly-growing industrialized economy, a crime rate lower than even the United States, a thriving tourist industry, and a high standard of living for most citizens.
But Rwanda's success cannot come at the cost of fundamental civil liberties. A gilded cage is still a cage, and Paul Rusesabagina is currently a prisoner of that cage, serving a 25-year sentence for crimes which he assuredly did not commit.
As long as people like Rusesabagina live in fear for their lives, Rwanda will never live up to its potential. And Paul Kagame has nobody to blame for that but himself.
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