Rusesabagina on conning spree of unsuspecting well wishers

We have learnt that Paul Rusesabagina, the now famous illusionist is returning to USA to milk a few more dollars from well intended American citizens. Under the banner of his so-called “Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation”, he is inviting the public to attend an event he is organizing on 19th June 2008 at the Loyola University School of Law, Chicago, Illinois which he pompously named “Beyond Hotel Rwanda: finding peace in Africa’s Great Lakes Region”. Our public would recall that Paul Rusesabagina vowed at the beginning of this year to concentrate his campaign in Europe after facing tough challenges in the Americas in the course of last year where people had started seeing his lies and began to question him on his unsubstantiated ill-intentioned statements. Although he was able to enlist as panelists at his conferences whether in Brussels or in The Hague a number of individuals sharing his hate ideology for the current regime in Rwanda, they turned out to be his liability as they faced a general outcry for their professed negationist and revisionist stand about the genocide of the Rwandan Tutsi. After facing unexpected setbacks in Europe, the self-described humanitarian decided to revisit the USA with the hope that the American opinion has by now forgotten his lies and how his true character was exposed by Rwandan genocide survivors as well as American citizens acquainted with the current realities in the country. This new attempt does not augur well however for Rusesabagina. Whereas he used to lure aboard with him some prominent personalities and scholars, this time he only managed to have on his side two former US Ambassadors – who, for yet undetermined reasons seem to be in bed with this imposter – Ambassadors Robert Krueger in Burundi from 1994 to 1996 and Robert Flaten in Rwanda from 1991 to 1993. Their period of service coincides with the genocide or its preparation and they undoubtedly got occasions to socialize with its masterminders. His latest victim is the less known David Zarembka “working on the ground healing and rebuilding communities within the African Great Lakes Region”, probably one of the unsuspecting individuals. We presume his latest victim was unassumingly lured in by Rusesabagina’s humanitarian pretence, but we can also bet that this is the case; it will not take much time before he realizes with contempt the ugly side of the individual he let himself associate with, as this has been the trend. “The HRRF – Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation – is engaged in helping the victims of the genocide in Rwanda and other instances of violence….A Truth and Reconciliation Commission will go beyond blame, and help survivors by revealing the fate of their friends, family and loved ones, giving them to closure…” This is really too much. Either the man is so embroiled in his own lies that he ends up believing in them or else he is so obsessed by his ambitions that he believes he is in the Hollywood movie to continuously take us for a ride. We have in this column, proven beyond any doubt that Rusesabagina has never given any help to any known genocide orphan nor widow whether in Rwanda or elsewhere and indeed he has on several occasions failed to substantiate his humanitarian claims when asked about the issue in different conferences. Let us hope someone in the audience will challenge him on this particular issue in Chicago again. Especially as those who will attend will have to part with $150, which they logically should know what it is for. However, for those not familiar with this other side of Rusesabagina, let us remind them of a few facts that will make them think twice before giving away their hard-earned money. To begin with, the so called “Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation” incorporated and approved in the state of Massachusetts in May 2005, has as its board members Paul Rusesabagina, Chairman, Tatiana Mukangamije, his wife, treasurer, Claude Karambizi, his son-in-law, Director and James Nkunzimana, another Rusesabagina’s son-in-law, Director. Surely if the Foundation was created for the purpose of Rusesabagina’s family welfare, there would not be any comment to make about its board members. But when Rusesabagina pretends that his Foundation is “engaged in helping the victims of genocide in Rwanda and other instances of violence…”, it is obvious that this is only for his personal livelihood as he has confessed in one of the conferences as well as footing the bills for his political ambitions. The Foundation is a fraudulent scheme made by and for the Rusesabaginas and they have nobody else to account to. As one can see, the officials of the Foundation are all members of the same family and we are reliably told that not only do they run the Foundation as their private milking cow, they also reside under the same roof. How practical! Indeed the Conrad Hilton Foundation had to learn this at its expenses when its officials tried to know to what use their thousands of dollars had been put to. They wrote letters to the HRRF in 2006 and 2007 but are yet to this date yet to get a response. Was it only for his family personal enrichment, this would not cause us much alarm. What really is worrying is that Rusesabagina transformed the Foundation into a cover for a now not so hidden political agenda. Paul Rusesabagina has since some time now been cultivating the role of authorized puppet and spokesperson for Rwanda’s opponents. And as we once wrote in this column, “the money donated by well-wishers for charitable causes has been channelled to Zambia to finance Rusesabagina’s transport business and to support genocidaire fugitives in that country evading justice, on the pretext that they are refugees. We then said that the money raised might end up buying weapons to destabilize Rwanda and the entire Great Lakes Region again, now that he has embarked on a futile attempt to win power...” His recent activities confirm our earlier analysis and, after failing to effectively bring all FDLR satellite opposition groups in the West under his leadership, he may resort to stealing the torch of the FDLR leadership from Murwanashyaka by claiming to be a more credible opposition spokesperson. His so much advertised “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” is nothing other than the “Inter-Rwandese Dialogue” that has became the FDLR and other opposition’s gospel. Let him be warned the Rwandans of today know what they want and are not for destabilization but development. Humanitarians cannot at the same time be schemers for war-mongering and as such cannot be on an orchestrated program of destabilization against a country that is gradually but steadily recovering from the apocalypse, which resulted from the same activities that the so-called humanitarian is involved in today. In opposition to Rusesabagina’s machinations we all say-Never again. Contact: muhetofe@gmail.com