Rwanda’s “Schindler” says he no hero
Published: December 30, 2004
He saved over 1,000 people from the horror of genocide, has been dubbed “Rwanda’s Schindler” and is the subject of a Hollywood movie on the 1994 bloodshed.
But Rwandan Paul Rusesabagina does not think of himself as a hero.
“I wouldn’t take myself as a hero,” the softly-spoken 50-year-old told Reuters in an interview.
“I rather take myself as someone who did his duties and responsibilities, someone who remained until the end when others changed completely their professions, and most of them became killers and others were killed.”
Ten years after Rwanda descended into chaos, during which 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and Hutu moderates were slaughtered in just 100 days, the genocide is back in the headlines after the release of a new film.
“Hotel Rwanda”, starring Don Cheadle as Rusesabagina and Nick Nolte as a U.N. commander, centres around the Mille Collines hotel in Kigali, the country’s leading hotel.
Rusesabagina was just a stand-in manager there, but used his cunning and military contacts to provide a haven for 1,268 people, most of whom had fled their homes and arrived at the hotel as “guests”.
He rationed water from the swimming pool, had checkpoints removed, bribed killers with money and scotch and kept a secret telephone line open to the outside world.
He was driven by a desire to save his Tutsi wife and their four children and by his commitment to the hotel’s occupants — none of whom were killed during the genocide.
The plot calls to mind the movie “Schindler’s List”, which told of the German factory owner Oskar Schindler’s sheltering of Jews from the Holocaust.
“I wanted to keep my people, the refugees safe,” Rusesabagina said. “That was my main objective and I tried to keep that up to the end through my contacts, because I knew many high-ranking generals … I knew many people in the government.”
He recalled how, on his way to another Kigali hotel, soldiers handed him a rifle and ordered him to kill his family and 26 other “cockroaches” travelling with him in a packed van.
“All over the streets you could see many dead bodies … and near us we were seeing dead bodies.”
Eventually he drove with the soldiers to the hotel and handed them the contents of his office safe.
“WAKE UP CALL” TO WORLD
Rusesabagina, now a businessman in Brussels, is still bitter at the international community’s failure to prevent the genocide.
The United Nations has accepted blame for failing to stop the slaughter by machete-wielding Hutu extremists and their followers, and the Canadian head of a U.N. force in Kigali was driven to the brink of suicide by what he experienced.
Romeo Dallaire, now retired, had a force of around 2,500 in Rwanda but most were withdrawn after the massacre began and following the deaths of 10 Belgian peacekeepers.
“All Rwandans told us it would have been better if the United Nations did not come at all than coming and pulling out,” said Rusesabagina.
“You know people wanted to go to Burundi, for instance. Many people were trying to go out. But when we saw the United Nations coming in we were sure that peace was coming slowly.”
He said U.N. peacekeepers were guarding thousands of vulnerable civilians when they were evacuated, leaving many of them facing almost certain death.
“‘Hotel Rwanda’ is kind of a wake up call to the international community. Look, this happened. You were informed. You turned your back … did not want to see and listen and at the end this was recognised as genocide.
“It is even now happening in Darfur,” Rusesabagina added, referring to the region of western Sudan where tens of thousands of people have died and where the United States says genocide has been committed.
Like Cheadle who plays him in the film, Rusesabagina is preparing for a publicity blitz for the movie, which has been nominated for Golden Globe awards and could be in the running at the Oscars.
He defended the decision by director Terry George to focus on events in the Milles Collines hotel rather than the savagery of the genocide itself.
“Noone would like to go and sit in the theatre and watch that for two hours because it was so horrible. It has to be a little bit light for the people to get the message.”
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