Paul Rusesabagina Tom Zoellner Popular Books

Paul Rusesabagina Tom Zoellner Biography & Facts

Paul Rusesabagina (Kinyarwanda: [ɾusesɑβaɟinɑ]; born 15 June 1954) is a Rwandan human rights activist. He worked as the manager of the Hôtel des Mille Collines in Kigali, during a period in which it housed 1,268 Hutu and Tutsi refugees fleeing the Interahamwe militia during the Rwandan genocide. None of these refugees were hurt or killed during the attacks. An account of Rusesabagina's actions during the genocide was later depicted in the film Hotel Rwanda in 2004, in which he was portrayed by American actor Don Cheadle. The film has been the subject both of critical acclaim and controversy in Rwanda. On the back of newly-found international fame, Rusesabagina embarked on a successful career as a public speaker, mostly touring universities in the United States. He campaigns for the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation, which he founded in 2006. He holds Belgian citizenship, and a U.S. green card, and has homes in Brussels, Belgium and San Antonio, Texas. Since fleeing Rwanda in 1996, he has become a prominent critic of Paul Kagame and the RPF government. He founded the PDR-Ihumure political party in 2006, and is currently President of the MRCD. On 31 August 2020, believing he was taking a chartered flight to Burundi from Dubai, he arrived in Kigali, where he was arrested on nine charges of terrorism that related to his association with the FLN (National Liberation Front), the armed wing of PDR-Ihumure, who claimed responsibility for terrorist attacks in 2018 which killed at least nine people. On 20 September 2021, he was convicted on terrorism charges and sentenced to 25 years in prison. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention rendered their opinion on 18 March 2022 that Rusesabagina had been illegally kidnapped, tortured, and sentenced after an unfair trial. The Working Group further found that Rusesabagina has been targeted by the government on account of his work as a human rights defender, because of his criticism of the government on a broad range of issues. In 2023, after serving two years in Mageragere prison, Rusesabagina's sentence was commuted by the Rwandan president. Early life, education, and family Rusesabagina was born in 1954. He was one of nine children born to a Hutu father, a respected community elder named Thomas Rupfure, and a Tutsi mother in Murama, Rwanda. Although stating that he grew up poor, in a "house ... made of mud and sticks" and "without shoes", Rusesabagina described his upbringing as "solidly middle class by the standards of Africa in the 1950s". Rusesabagina's parents sent him to school in a town near Gitwe run by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. By the age of 13, he was fluent in English and French, as well as his native Kinyarwanda. Due to distance and his commitment to work, he and his wife Esther legally separated in 1981. Rusesabagina was granted full custody of their three children: Diane, Lys, and Roger. In 1987, he was invited to a wedding where he met Tatiana, a nurse who lived in Ruhengeri. Tatiana and Paul married two years later and she adopted his children. She gave birth twice, but only their son, Trésor, survived infancy. Rusesabagina's father died in 1991, and his mother shortly after. Career Ministry By the end of his adolescence, Rusesabagina had decided to become a minister. He studied at the Faculty of Theology in Yaoundé. In Cameroon, he soon became disillusioned with the prospect of a career as a clergyman, deciding he wanted to live an 'urban life'. Hotel des Mille Collines In December 1978, Rusesabagina moved to Kigali. While there, an acquaintance, Isaac Mulihano, invited Rusesabagina to apply for an opening to work at the Hôtel des Mille Collines. He was offered a position and was sent to Nairobi and then to Switzerland and Brussels to study hotel management. As he rose through the ranks at the Hôtel des Mille Collines, his promotions earned him the resentment of some fellow Rwandans in the staff. Some took to calling him 'muzungu' – a Kinyarwandan word for 'white man'. In 1992, Paul Rusesabagina was promoted to assistant general manager of the Diplomates Hotel, an affiliate of the Hôtel des Mille Collines. Rwandan genocide Events leading to genocide During Rusesabagina's training abroad, and his rise as a distinguished hôtelier, the Hutu-dominated government of President Juvénal Habyarimana was facing military pressure from the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). After a ceasefire in Arusha brought the Civil War to an end in 1993, several reports of militia activity – including the stockpiling of weapons and the creation of lists of Tutsis – had been received by the UN and other authorities. Alongside this, radio stations including the infamous Radio Télévision Libre des Milles Collines (RTLM) were broadcasting messages about Tutsi plots to murder Hutus, and encouraging violence towards Tutsis. On 6 April 1994, a plane containing President Habyarimana (and others, including Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira) was shot down as it approached the Kigali Airport for landing. Everyone on board was killed. 'Hutu Power' extremists within the government and local militias blamed this event on the Tutsi, and consequently, the Rwandan genocide started on 6 April 1994. Interahamwe militias consulted their lists and began searching the city for Tutsis and Tutsi 'sympathisers' to murder. Though Rusesabagina was Hutu (as his father was Hutu and his mother Tutsi), his wife Tatiana was a Tutsi and his children considered mixed – meaning that his family was under considerable threat. Providing shelter When the violence broke out, soldiers came to Rusesabagina's house, asking him to open the Hôtel Diplomates, which the interim Hutu government used as a headquarters. Rusesabagina bribed the soldiers with money from the hotel safe to ensure safe passage for his family. When the government evacuated the hotel, on account of RPF shelling, Rusesabagina arrived at the Hôtel des Mille Collines. Upon arrival, Rusesabagina promptly phoned the hotel's corporate owners, Sabena, imploring them to put him in charge as the acting general manager of the Mille Collines. They sent through a fax, and he assumed control of the hotel from the staff who had been running it since the killings began. Despite Rusesabagina's claims that Romeo Dallaire 'rescinded' an order for UN protection of the hotel, there was in fact, a strong UN peacekeeping presence at the Hotel, including Mbaye Diagne, a Senegalese military observer who was ferrying threatened Tutsis into the Hotel. General Dallaire – in charge of the UN deployment, and his deputy, Brent Beardsley, were also often at the hotel, ensuring its safety from killings. Rusesabagina sheltered approximately twelve hundred people during the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. One radio reporter said: "Nobody had been killed, injured, beaten, tortured, expelled or retrieved from the hotel during the whole time we were refugees. Paul Rusesabagina managed to do the impossible to save our lives.... Discover the Paul Rusesabagina Tom Zoellner popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Paul Rusesabagina Tom Zoellner books.