Paul Rusesabagina
Hotel Rwandan is centered around Paul Rusesabagina and his luxury hotel where he is the manager. He is well known for his heroic actions during what became the Rwandan genocide as he helped shelter and save the lives of about 1, 200 refugees. In Rwanda, the Hutu was carrying out a genocide over the Tutsi and they killed 800, 000 people in 100 days which shows the terrifying efficiency of their killing. The people killed were not even all Tutsi, many of them were also Hutu moderates because they were seen as sympathizers to the enemy. Rusesabagina was obviously considered a Hutu moderate and Tutsi sympathizer when he was sheltering the Tutsi so by doing so he was endangering his own life.
At the beginning of the attacks, Paul was hesitant to help his neighbors as they begged him to call his contacts because he knew that he would need to later to help his wife and kids who were Tutsi and intermixed. However, he quickly realized the seriousness of the issue and took action; he spent hours on the phone calling influential leaders explaining the situation and pleading with them to send help. He also bartered with luxury items such as cigars, gold, wine and money in return for refugees seeking shelter.
Since the genocide, Paul has founded the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation (HRRF) which is dedicated to providing support, care and assistance to children orphaned by and women abused during the genocide. For his extensive work, he has also received multiple awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Civil Rights Museum Freedom Award, and the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award.
http://fordschool.umich.edu/events/2014/20-years-after-rwandan-genocide-paul-rusesabagina
Some people claimed that Paul Reusebagina, charged people for hotel rooms during the genocide, and he refused admittance to some people who could not afford it. If these allegations are true do you still think that Reusebagina should get a Presidental Medal of freedom?
ReplyDeleteGreat blog post! I think it was really brave of him to do what he did and then apart from that he also took all those orphans with him and his wife. I was really glad to hear that he got these awards because he really deserved them after everything he did.
ReplyDeleteNice post, it's cool to learn about the impact that Paul Rusesabagina had in real life and what ahppened to him after the genocide. It's great to know that the HRRF Founcdation exsits today and that he was rocgnized for all the good that he did during the genocide. Today he lives in Belgium with his wfie and they adopted their two nieces after the parents, (Tatiana's brother and sister-in-law) were never found.
ReplyDelete