Rwanda Claims Hollywood Historically Inaccurate

Hello,

I am amazed that someone that history and hollywood shows did nothing while people were being killed can now say that someone who did do something was only a minor player.

Makes you wonder why after all this time Mr. Kagame is trying to cast doubt on someone elses honor.

Thanks
Tkwizron

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This is to answer Tkwizron. This is to let you know that Paul Kagame led the forces(Rwandan Patriotic Army) that stopped the genocide; so saying that he did nothing wrong. As a Rwandan and a genocide survivor, who knows first hand what happened(not from Hollywood), Rusesabagina is going around telling people, and also in his recent book, the Hollywood fiction and this not only doesnot help the victims try to heal, but also it's not helping the reconciliation path that Rwanda is going through. All this for his personal gain; he goes around asking for money to help the orphans of the genocide! He has no so far given a penny to any orphan. So don't believe to all that Hollywood throws at your screen.

Thanks

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What President Kagame says is quiet appealing to many Rwandans who experienced the genocide and wants facts put right. Rusesabagina, to many who were in Hotel mille collines, know that those who stayed well in the Hotel, were those who could foot the bills, and others would be made to sign, so that after the genocide they were to pay. So somebody whose picture is painted in those colours can't be taken to be a hero, someone who was sane, when the majority of Rwandan Hutus were running mad and killing Tutis. An eyewitness in Kigali, who was in the Hotel at the time says that Rusesabagina wanted to throw him out of the Hotel 'cause he wasn't able to pay, and man threatened to commit suicide by jumping from the 4th floor instead of being killed by the Interahamwe, then other people hid hime from the so called Hotel manager, and that is how he survived. So to that and so many others, its an abuse of what they went through, when their tomentor is depicted as a hero.

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Here are more comment about Hotel Rwanda:

The overall message of Hotel Rwanda has never been questioned; what has been offensive to many of us is Rusesabagina’s distortion of Rwanda's past, and his lies about its present. The first makes him an apologist for the genocide, the second is an insult to the many Rwandans who have worked night and day to put Rwanda on an irreversible track of recovery. I don’t need to expand on the second, because Rwanda’s progress since 1994 is an open book. One does not have to like President Kagame to see how much Rwanda has advanced over the last twelve years.
Rusesabagina fooled many for a while, then his true colors started to show. By the way, that “ordinary man” and “I am not a hero” business is plain fake modesty. He knows what to say to get applause, and he knows how to turn down questions he has no answers for. Once he found a platform to use for his political ambition, his talks across North America and Europe grew into a malicious steady farce that saddens many genocide survivors to no end. Let me state my position here, that Mr. Rusesabagina has every right to seek political office. Let me also clearly say that he should not --and will not-- use our dead, to gain it. I cannot address all of Rusesabagina’s many lies about Rwanda here, but I will point out some:
1) Rusesabagina routinely explains that the Rwandan tragedy goes back many generations when the Tutsi minority used the Hutu majority as slaves. This is simply not true. The Kingdom of Rwanda was ruled by a Tutsi king. The fact is, however, that there were many Hutus that were very powerful in their own right. In the northwest part of the country, for example, Hutu princes (known as abahinza) ruled for many years; the king’s army comprised a sizeable number of Hutus that fought alongside the Tutsis. On the flip side, a vast majority of Tutsis were no better off than their Hutu neighbors.
In my letter to the editor published by the Washington Post on May 6, 1994 (Rwanda’s Genocide Is Not Random “Tribal Violence”), I took offense to the Post’s depiction of the genocide as the result of ancient tribal hatred. Sadly, here I am again, twelve years later, taking offense to the same issue; this time, with my fellow Rwandan, Rusesabagina. This is a very serious issue that nobody should be allowed to play with. We, Rwandans, have seen the slave card played by many political opportunists to the detriment of our nation. To better understand the history of Hutu-Tutsi relations in Rwanda, I urge you to read a background paper by Human Rights Watch that was published last month, titled “The Rwandan Genocide: How it Was Prepared”, specifically its “Demographics and History” section (Link: http://hrw.org/backgrounder/africa/rwanda0406).
2) Rusesabagina stated in a National Public Radio interview (Talk of the Nation, April 10, 2006) that eighty percent of women in Rwanda's northwest (a historically Hutu area) are widows whose Hutu husbands and sons were killed by Tutsi rebels before the genocide. (Link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5334369). The Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation web site claims that “with as many as 500,000 orphans, it is estimated that Rwanda has the highest number of orphans in the world”. (Link: http://www.hrrfoundation.org). There is no proof to back up these outrageous and inaccurate statistics.
3) Rusesabagina's claim that the Hutu serving in the current government are puppets of the Tutsi leadership is an aberration that needs to be addressed. This is a gloomy reminder of one of the infamous Hutu Ten Commandments that labeled every Hutu friendly to a Tutsi, or married to a Tutsi, a fool and a traitor to be eliminated. Here, I’d like to alert Mr. George and the public to the growing revisionism of the Rwandan genocide in Hutu extremist circles, supported by their Western allies, especially in France, Belgium, and Canada. I sincerely hope that Rusesabagina has not joined their ranks.
4) Rusesabagina dismisses the role that women are playing in Rwandan politics today (see NPR interview above). He says that they were picked to serve Kagame’s interests. To any fair observer, the positive impact of women leaders in Rwanda is undeniable (see a September 2003 case study by Women Waging Peace: Strengthening Governance: The Role of Women in Rwanda's Transition).
5) A Rwandan senator who's a friend of the Rusesabaginas (portrayed in the film as "Dr. Odette") recently wrote Congressman Christopher Smith of New Jersey, Chairman of US House of Representatives’ Africa Subcommittee, to warn him about Rusesabagina's lies. In that letter, she revealed that he is building a house in Rwanda's capital, Kigali. Also, Rusesabagina has established a foundation to help orphans and widows of the genocide. If both facts are true, we welcome them; the question is how can he invest in a country that he claims is unsafe and economically declining?
6) Rusesabagina claims that he cannot go to Rwanda because he fears for his life. This is a classic ploy used by many to facilitate political asylum in Western countries. On February 5, 2006, Rusesabagina had agreed to join a Rwandan radio “Contact FM” debate with survivors of Hotel Mille Collines. At the last minute, he decided not to participate in the program and turned off his phone. Was he afraid there would be an attempt on his life through the air waves, or was he simply afraid to face those survivors?
Comment by Louise Mushikiwabo

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