Paul Rusesabagina, the inspiration for the film "Hotel Rwanda," spoke to a packed Cohen Auditorium Tuesday night and condemned an international community that stood by as almost a million of his countrymen perished.
Rusesabagina came to Tufts as the inaugural speaker in the Merrin Distinguished Lecture Series.
Rabbi Jeffrey Summit gave introductory remarks, calling Rusesabagina "a model for what it means to be a moral voice." The event was part of a year long Hillel-run program called Moral Voices on Genocide. Jackson Gym held overflow seating for the event.
In the hour-long program, Rusesabagina spoke about the history of Rwanda, his role in the conflict, and the apathy of the international community. The genocide broke out in 1994, almost immediately after a peace agreement had been reached between the Tutsi president and Hutu rebel groups.
The United Nations sent 2,500 soldiers as peacekeepers at the end of a two-year negotiation process that included the Rwandan president, rebel groups, and help from the United States.
"We trusted the international community," Rusesabagina said. "We trusted the United Nations."
The peace treaty was doomed after the presidents of Rwanda and neighboring Burundi were killed in the same week during the spring of 1994. Rusesabagina recalled that when he heard the news, he was eating dinner with his brother- and sister-in-law. It was the last time he saw them.
Rebel groups and militia men began killing their countrymen that night, targeting the ethnic Tutsi minority. The following morning Rusesabagina's 14-year-old son went to his neighbor's house to visit a friend and found the entire family slaughtered. Rusesabagina's son spent the next four days alone in his room, refusing to talk to anyone.
"Ten Belgian soldiers were also butchered that morning," Rusesabagina said. The Belgians then withdrew their forces, quickly followed by other international peacekeepers.
"Everyone decided to pull out, to abandon a nation to thieves, to gangsters, to thugs," Rusesabagina said. He described hellish evacuation scenes with Rwandans begging those leaving to take some Africans with them.
"We saw dogs being evacuated and humans begging, 'Please take us with you,'" Rusesabagina said.
Rusesabagina stayed holed up in his house with the five other members of his immediate family and with 26 neighbors who had also sought protection behind the gates of his home. When soldiers finally came knocking at the gates, they demanded the keys to the store rooms and cellar of the hotel where Rusesabagina had worked.
The soldiers who were at first nice to Rusesabagina at his house ended up pointing a gun at his head after they received the keys they were looking for, demanding that Rusesabagina kill his family and neighbors. It took the hotel manager two hours to negotiate with the soldiers for the lives of 31 men and women.
"On the screen, the scene is about two minutes," Rusesabagina said, referring to the movie "Hotel Rwanda."
Rusesabagina and his family ended up at the Hotel Milles Collines in the capital city Kigali, where he had only worked for a year and a half. Suddenly in the position of hotel manager, he had to deal with an insubordinate staff while constantly negotiating with rebels for the lives of those refugees in the hotel. During the next two and a half months, he helped save almost 1,200 men and women who sought refuge in the hotel.
Rusesabagina said the almost one million people killed in Rwanda represented about 15 percent of the country's population.
"Can you imagine 40 million Americans being killed... and the international community saying nothing?" he asked.
At one point during the killing, UN soldiers negotiated with the rebels for a prisoner exchange, giving those in the hotel an opportunity to flee. Rusesabagina was given with the chance to leave Rwanda with his family, but he recognized that doing so would mean death for everyone left behind in the hotel. He described the decision to remain in Kigali as the most difficult he has ever made.
"If I leave them, I will be a prisoner of my own conscience," Rusesabagina said, referring to those in the hotel. "That was the most heartbreaking experience I have been through in my whole life."
He sent his family off, but they returned to the Mille Collines when their convoy was assaulted while making its way through the city.
At the end of the conflict, Rusesabagina and his family drove south to their home.
"All along the road, there was no human being alive, no animal alive," he said.
At the end of the talk Rusesabagina compared the genocide in Rwanda to other contemporary conflicts in Africa. In the last ten years, 4 million have died in fighting in the Congo, 1.8 million people have been displaced in Northern Uganda, and 2 million have been displaced in the Darfur region of Sudan.
Rusesabagina recently traveled to Sudan and said Darfur looked exactly as Rwanda had in 1993 and1994.
"[The refugees] sleep on the Sahara sand. They have no food. They have no shelter. They have no water," Rusesabagina said. "It is now or never for all of us to stand up and say no."
As for reconstruction efforts in Rwanda, Rusesabagina was not very optimistic.
"Justice is the whole issue," he said. The trials set up in 1995 have processed an average of two and a half cases per year. They are set to close in 2008.
"The international community also has failed," he said. "We have survivors, victims who are waiting to see justice be done."
When asked during a short question and answer period about the film "Hotel Rwanda," Rusesabagina responded that the depiction was somewhat diluted.
"The movie you have seen on the screen is a portrayal of what was going on in the hotel, not in the genocide," he said.
