Hotel Rwanda hero: Rwanda is a volcano waiting to erupt
CNN - June 10, 2010
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/06/10/paul.rusesabagina.interview/
Every week CNN's African Voices highlights Africa's most engaging
personalities, exploring the lives and passions of people who rarely
open themselves up to the camera. This week the show profiles Paul
Rusesabagina, who saved the lives of 1,200 people during the Rwandan
genocide, his story portrayed in the 2004 film Hotel Rwanda.
London, England (CNN) -- The hotel manager who saved the lives of more
than 1,200 Rwandans during the 1994 genocide has warned that the
country remains in the grip of ethnic tensions that could "erupt
anytime."
Sixteen years after the killings in which an estimated 800,000 to one
million Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus died, Paul Rusesabagina says
lessons have not been learned from past mistakes.
During the genocide, Rusesabagina, the real-life inspiration for the
2004 film "Hotel Rwanda," helped to shelter more than 1,200 people at
the Milles Collines hotel, where he was assistant manager and used
many of his business and political connections to help keep the
building safe.
Rusesabagina is now a human rights campaigner and a critic of Rwanda's
Tutsi-led regime.
He told CNN: "We've changed dancers but the music remains. History
repeats itself and we don't learn."
He added: "What happened in 1992,1993 is now happening again. Since
February 19, there have been many grenade attacks within the country.
Rwanda is now a split country."
"Rwanda is a dormant volcano that might erupt anytime. The ruling
government has created a tiny group of elites that has taken over
everything," he says.
A spokesman from the country's foreign ministry declined to comment on
Rusesabagina's claims, telling CNN: "We have nothing to say about
this."
His comments come amid growing international concern over the arrests
of Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire, an ethnic Hutu and her
U.S. lawyer.
According to the Rwanda news agency (RNA), Ingabire was arrested for
allegedly propagating genocide ideology after she called for action to
be taken against those responsible for killing Hutus during the 1994
conflict.
She was freed on bail and had her passport seized. Last month her U.S.
lawyer Peter Erlinder was arrested as he flew into the country to
defend his client. He was held on a genocide denial charge.
Erlinder is lead defense counsel at the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). He remains in prison after being denied
bail Tuesday, the agency reported. Rusesabagina has called for
Erlinder's release.
In a statement on his website, he wrote: "Professor Peter Erlinder was
doing his job as a lawyer. In a civil society that is not grounds for
arrest. If President Kagame considers Rwanda a democracy, he must
release Professor Erlinder immediately."
Human rights activists, including Amnesty International, believe the
arrests are politically motivated as Ingabire plans to challenge
incumbent president Paul Kagame in the upcoming August presidential
elections.
Blog: Meeting the 'quiet hero' of Rwanda's genocide
According to New York-based group, Human Rights Watch, the Rwandan
government has denied a work visa to one of its representatives ahead
of the elections.
Rwanda is a dormant volcano that might erupt anytime.
In a statement, the organization said: "The Rwandan government's
decision to deny a work visa to Human Rights Watch's representative in
Kigali demonstrates a pattern of increasing restrictions on free
expression in Rwanda ahead of August's presidential elections."
Earlier this year, Kagame hit back at the activists in an interview
with CNN. He said: "If you are talking about people in the human
rights community from outside...I have an issue with this.
"You tend to make a judgment of a country, 11 million people, on what
a couple of people have said and (they) don't take into account what
Rwandans say."
Kagame added, "Nobody has asked the Rwandans... it's as if they don't
matter in the eyes of the human rights people. It's our own decisions
in the end."
Kagame has been hailed a hero for ending the genocide that happened in
the country between April and June 1994.
Rusesabagina says he has not lived in Rwanda since 1996 when he
survived an assassination attempt.
He now lives in Belgium and travels the world campaigning to raise
awareness of a bloody civil war that has killed seven million people
in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Asked if he considers his actions during the genocide to be heroic, he
says: "I'm not a hero. I'm an ordinary man. People were taking me as a
super human being but I'm as ordinary as you and many others."
