{"id":42855,"date":"2021-02-11T13:28:50","date_gmt":"2021-02-11T13:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/when-it-comes-to-rwanda-don-t-believe-everything-you-see-in-the-movies\/"},"modified":"2021-02-18T09:52:28","modified_gmt":"2021-02-18T09:52:28","slug":"when-it-comes-to-rwanda-don-t-believe-everything-you-see-in-the-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/when-it-comes-to-rwanda-don-t-believe-everything-you-see-in-the-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"When it comes to Rwanda, don\u2019t believe everything you see in the movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many Rwandans regard the protagonist of a Hollywood film as a terrorist, not a hero.<\/p>\n

In his recent Foreign Policy article on the protagonist of the popular Hollywood film Hotel Rwanda, Anjan Sundaram adds his name to the list of commentators who have chosen the court of public opinion to absolve Paul Rusesabagina\u2014a man who stands accused of multiple counts of terrorism.<\/p>\n

While the screenplay written by Keir Pearson and Terry George does make for compelling drama, it diverges significantly from the reality and the lived experience of the survivors of the genocide against the Tutsi who sought refuge at the Hotel des Mille Collines in 1994.<\/p>\n

It is not my duty to litigate in these pages; I will leave that to Rwanda\u2019s independent and internationally recognized judiciary. But it would be a betrayal of the truth to allow for uncritical, one-sided narratives pushed by several journalists\u2014and supported by Rusesabagina\u2019s public relations machine\u2014to run rampant. I would therefore like to draw the attention of the media to an often neglected side of the story.<\/p>\n

According to numerous accounts from survivors, the popular portrayal of Rusesabagina\u2014the erstwhile manager of the Hotel des Mille Collines, or \u201cHotel Rwanda\u201d\u2014is patently false. In a Le Monde investigation, the survivor Cyrille Ntaganira told journalists how when \u201cRusesabagina came to tell us we had to pay,\u201d he was only able to stay when one of his roommates \u201csigned an IOU with him.\u201d <\/p>\n

Another survivor, Immacul\u00e9e Mukanyonga, claimed that Rusesabagina withheld food and water to those unable to pay, forcing guests to drink chlorinated pool water. In his comprehensive book Inside the Hotel Rwanda, Edouard Kayihura\u2014a genocide survivor who spent 100 days as a refugee in the Hotel des Mille Collines and was later the official in charge of prosecuting crimes against humanity in Rwanda\u2014corroborates these testimonies and adds more, including the allegation that lists of hotel guests and their room numbers were passed on to Hutu Power radio stations by Rusesabagina.<\/p>\n

Accounts from some foreign officials who were posted in Rwanda in 1994 and spent extensive time at the Hotel des Mille Collines during the genocide align with the allegations above. These include the United Nations peacekeepers Gen. Romeo Dallaire and Capt. Amadou Deme. Both have expressed disgust at the film. Dallaire has said it was \u201cnot worth looking at\u201d because it was troops with the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda \u201cwho stayed in Rwanda \u2026 who saved the people at the Hotel Mille Collines\u2014not the hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina.\u201d To Deme, the film\u2019s portrayal of events is \u201crepulsive for its untruthfulness.\u201d<\/p>\n

When confronted with these facts, Sundaram\u2019s opinions do not stand up to scrutiny.<\/p>\n

The article fails to discuss the facts surrounding the trial, including Rusesabagina\u2019s admission that he helped found the National Liberation Front (FLN), which the Rwandan government regards as a terrorist group. <\/p>\n

This makes Sundaram\u2019s premature dismissal of the trial as a \u201cKafkaesque farce\u201d irresponsible, at best.<\/p>\n

Rusesabagina is charged with founding and supporting the FLN, which has openly claimed responsibility for murdering innocent Rwandans. Not only has Rusesabagina publicly admitted that he helped form the FLN, but he also called for FLN troops to \u201cuse any means possible \u2026 against the Kagame army.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sundaram sees no issue with \u201c[a]rmed groups seeking to overthrow Kagame\u201d being \u201cattracted to Rusesabagina as a figurehead.\u201d His disregard for the suffering of ordinary Rwandans, who have tragically lost their lives at the hands of terrorist groups like the FLN, is unethical and dangerous. All over the world, such groups and their leaders have been tracked down and brought to justice. There is no reason Rwanda should be an exception.<\/p>\n

The author\u2019s incomplete assessment of the facts is again evident in his discussion of Rwanda\u2019s economic transformation, which has been roundly praised by economists such as Paul Collier. <\/p>\n

Because the hard-fought nature of our nation\u2019s unprecedented journey from devastation to development does not fit with his narrative, Sundaram goes to considerable lengths to undermine it. He cites an academic disagreement between the World Bank and a group of professors as proof that \u201cKagame had manipulated economic growth.\u201d <\/p>\n

Rather than addressing the nuanced academic debate around how to weight the consumer price index in Rwanda, Sundaram creates a fiction in which the entire World Bank is apparently under the finger of Rwanda, which is manifestly absurd.<\/p>\n

The unprecedented growth, falling poverty, and declining inequality that we have accomplished as a nation are dismissed. Instead, Sundaram\u2019s rewrites reality, stating that it is \u201ctragic,\u201d but somehow inevitable, that Rwandans allegedly \u201cnow confront the prospect of even more violence.\u201d One hopes he is merely misguided, rather than malicious, in implicitly validating the ideologies of terrorist groups masquerading as liberation movements.<\/p>\n

Rwanda\u2019s government welcomes outside voices, just as we welcome strong partnerships with other nations based not on deference but on cooperation. In our commitment to national self-reliance, we accept that we will not always be perfect. <\/p>\n

But we ask that the international perception of our history and sovereign recovery be based on objective fact, not on one-sided and selective reporting.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/author\/mathilde-mukantabana\/ <\/p>\n

{{Mathilde Mukantabana is Rwanda\u2019s ambassador to the United States.}}<\/p>\n

\"Rusesabagina<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{ {{This article was first published in The Foreign Policy Magazine on 10th February 2021}} }<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[72,75],"byline":[2983],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-42855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-featured-news-home","tag-homenews","byline-mathilde-mukantabana"],"bylines":[{"id":2983,"name":"Mathilde Mukantabana","slug":"mathilde-mukantabana","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2983,"name":"Mathilde Mukantabana","slug":"mathilde-mukantabana","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42855"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=42855"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=42855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}