Rusesabagina, the liar

Exactly two years ago, February 25, 2009 Paul Rusesabagina was a guest of Lehigh University in the United States. In his lecture, as usual, Rusesabagina affirmed his faith in the power of words, he considers to be weapons in the arsenal of human beings, and that he fights with words than guns. He implored the students to “stand up for the truth”. The inspirer of the movie “Hotel Rwanda” was later quoted championing for truth about genocide in Rwanda in an article written by Fletcher Farrar and published by the Illinois Times on May 6, 2010. Based on interviews, and articles quoting the “Hero”, he is a conscientious liar, and does it with passion and impunity to the unsuspecting audiences in Europe and America, with some exceptions. A renowned genocide scholar, Deborah Lipstadt, say,, Paul Rusesabagina is one of the people who have been “most active in spreading” that the Tutsi have been killing Hutus for years and therefore the genocide against them is an act of vengeance. Shamed in Court On June 6, 2008, a British Magistrate issued a judgment in the extradition hearing of four Rwandan Genocide suspects.In his 129 page long judgment, Judge Anthony Evans, Designated District Judge, City of Westminster Magistrate’s Court, the credibility of one of the witnesses for the defence, Paul Rusesabagina, was critically questioned and quashed. In his testimony on April 3, 2008, Rusesabagina had testified that he left Rwanda in September 1996 “after being almost killed by the Directorate of Military Intelligence.” But the Judge notes: “However, he gave no explanation for this, nor how it was attempted. This is somewhat perplexing, because, on his own account, he was regarded as a hero for his actions, particularly as some members of the present government are among those allegedly saved.” (para. 390) The judge further said he did do not regard Rusesabagina as an expert witness because, among other things: “His evidence is that of an implacable opponent of the regime and cannot in any way be regarded as that of an expert.” (para. 398) On December 2, 2006, Paul Rusesabagina wrote a letter to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of England to protest against the visit of President Paul Kagame’s to the UK. In that letter, he accuses the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) as the “the root causes of the Rwandan genocide”. The letter which was also copied to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, was requesting for the “biggest favour” which was “to help quicken the collapse” of Kagame’s government through “international instruments of justice.” Attached to the letter was a 17 page document he had published ten days before with a title: “Compendium of RPF Crimes October 1990 to present: The case for overdue prosecution”. In this compilation also available on other websites, Rusesabagina says was prepared to “to bring to light” RPF’s “apparent share of responsibility in the whole Rwandan tragedy”. According to Rusesabagina, Judge Evans observed in his judgment: “any successful Hutu will be killed, imprisoned or be forced into exile but one historical example only is given”. It was also revealed that this witness made “a number of wild and general allegations about Human Rights in Rwanda which are made without any supporting proof …” (para.400) In the testimony he gave to the British court, Rusesabagina made the weirdest statements typical of genocidaires and Hutu power ideologues, before and after the genocide, to justify their heinous crimes. Rusesabagina blamed the RPF of being responsible for the death of president Habyarimana, hence responsible to the genocide. And, that President Melchior Ndadaye of Burundi was “killed by the RPF in 1993”. This was nothing other than a recycled speech of Frodouald Karamira, the architect of Hutu Power. In an inflammatory speech he made in Kigali on 23 November 1993, Karamira told his bloody crowd: “…believe it, but you should believe it. That Burundi coup d’état was rooted here in Rwanda. Whether RPF denies it or accepts it, it is all the same. It is known that Kagame had a hand in the Bujumbura plan. It is in the same context that RPF is now alleged to be making up other plans in relation to that other coup d’état of Burundi.” Most shocking was what Rusesabagina said in his testimony about the prison conditions in Rwanda. It is agreed by the expert witnesses, that the prison conditions are deplorable, Judge Evans acknowledged--“but none of them goes as far as this witness as saying that there are ten times as many prisoners accommodated as the numbers the prisons were built for; that prisoners are used as, effectively, slave labour in the Congo; and, strangest of all, that there are secret jails located in unidentified areas unknown to humanitarians, human rights activists and journalists. He produces no supporting evidence for any of these allegations.” (para.401) Some of Rusesabagina’s successive statements were that the Human Rights agencies support the RPF; that the roadblocks during the genocide were manned by the RPF and that there was no systematic government-led genocide. To these statements of the “Hero” the judge says were “so contrary to all evidence and facts placed before this court as to be worthless.” (para.427)Judge Evans says he spent a great deal of time looking at this evidence before he came to a conclusion that Rusesabagina was not independent. “He is clearly a very strong opponent of the present regime, even going so far as to suggest that it was responsible for the genocide, and making other wild and exaggerated claims.”(para.428) The Judge appreciated the role played by lawyers who cross-examined Rusesabagina, because they exposed the background to his evidence “and show that the evidence was not that of an independent expert, but rather that of a man with a background strongly allied to the extremist Hutu faction, ‘and as such cannot be considered as independent and reasoned. In the light of the bias displayed, I am satisfied that no weight can be attached to this evidence.” (para.429) As the saying goes, birds of the same feathers flock together, Rusesabagina admitted in that court that he is a friend of Pierre Péan author of a Nazi-like book “Black Furies, White Liars” (2005). Péan is described by a French historian, Jean-Pierre Chrétien as having an “amazing revisionist passion”. Péan and Rusesabagina have reasons to be friends. tndahiro@gmail.com