44 Facts About Paul Rusesabagina

Paul Rusesabagina is a Rwandan human rights activist.

Paul Rusesabagina worked as the manager of the Hotel des Mille Collines in Kigali, during a period in which it housed 1,268 Hutu and Tutsi refugees fleeing the militia during the Rwandan genocide.

Paul Rusesabagina holds Belgian citizenship, and a US green card, and has homes in Brussels, Belgium and San Antonio, Texas.

Paul Rusesabagina founded the PDR-Ihumure political party in 2006, and is currently President of the MRCD.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention rendered their opinion on 18 March 2022 that Paul Rusesabagina had been illegally kidnapped, tortured, and sentenced after an unfair trial.

The Working Group further found that Paul Rusesabagina has been targeted by the Government on account of his work as a human rights defender, because of his criticism of the Government on a broad range of issues.

In 2023, after serving two years in prison, Paul Rusesabagina's sentence was commuted by the Rwandan president.

Paul Rusesabagina was one of nine children born to a Hutu father, a respected community elder named Thomas Rupfure, and a Tutsi mother in Murama, Rwanda.

The young Paul Rusesabagina sometimes had to sleep outside his house as his family provided shelter to refugees seeking shelter from clashes between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups.

Paul Rusesabagina's parents sent him to school in a town near Gitwe run by the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Paul Rusesabagina was granted full custody of their three children: Diane, Lys, and Roger.

Tatiana and Paul Rusesabagina married two years later and she adopted his children.

Paul Rusesabagina gave birth twice, but only their son, Tresor, survived infancy.

Paul Rusesabagina's father died in 1991, and his mother shortly after.

Paul Rusesabagina studied at the Faculty of Theology in Yaounde.

Paul Rusesabagina was offered a position and was sent to Nairobi and then to Switzerland and Brussels to study hotel management.

In 1992, Paul Rusesabagina was promoted to assistant general manager of the Diplomates Hotel, an affiliate of the Hotel des Mille Collines.

Paul Rusesabagina bribed the soldiers with money from the hotel safe to ensure safe passage for his family.

Paul Rusesabagina sheltered approximately twelve hundred people during the Rwandan Genocide of 1994.

Paul Rusesabagina managed to do the impossible to save our lives at the moment when others were massacring their own children, their own wives.

Paul Rusesabagina's father paid Hutu militia to execute him so that he would not die a more painful death:.

In 1999, Paul Rusesabagina received a phone call from an American screenwriter named Keir Pearson.

Paul Rusesabagina has denied claims that he threatened to evict refugees who were unable to pay their bills.

Paul Rusesabagina was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the United States, by President George W Bush on 9 November 2005 for "remarkable courage and compassion in the face of genocidal terror".

Paul Rusesabagina's speaking engagements ranged from schools and universities to churches and businesses, in his own words: "whoever wants to invite me, invites me and I talk about my experiences of 1994".

The party's general ideology is somewhat unclear, but as Paul Rusesabagina described in a 2012 speech, its policy is broadly oriented towards the "political struggle to liberate Rwanda from the current RPF dictatorship".

In January 2016, Paul Rusesabagina announced his intent to run for President of Rwanda.

Rusesabagina has been critical of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, denouncing him as a dictator and accusing him of extrajudicial killings.

Paul Rusesabagina claimed that the RPF shot down Juvenal Habyarimana's plane, a theory ruled out by a ballistics report, and that the killings committed by the RPF rebels during the conflict constituted genocide.

Paul Rusesabagina said that one nurse was "ordered to give tainted vaccines to prisoners, Hutus and other enemies of the Kagame administration" and to "control population growth among undesirable populations by causing birth and surgical complications".

On 6 April 2006, Kagame suggested, "[Paul Rusesabagina] should try his talents elsewhere and not climb on the falsehood of being a hero, because it's totally false".

Paul Rusesabagina has consistently denied allegations put forward by the Rwandan government accusing Paul Rusesabagina of helping the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a Rwandan Hutu Power rebel group, which has been condemned by the UN Security Council for "serious violations of international law involving the targeting of women and children".

Paul Rusesabagina has admitted to backing and "diplomatically" supporting the group, as evidenced in a widely disseminated video in which he pledges his "unreserved support" for the FLN and denies any wrongdoing.

On 31 August 2020, Paul Rusesabagina was kidnapped and taken to Kigali where he was arrested on charges of terrorism, arson, kidnap and "murder perpetrated against unarmed, innocent Rwandan civilians on Rwandan territory".

Paul Rusesabagina's trial was initially scheduled for the 26 January 2021, but was postponed due to ongoing complications with the COVID-19 situation in Kigali.

Paul Rusesabagina told the court that he did not have Rwandan citizenship, so he could not face trial in Rwanda.

Paul Rusesabagina did not attend subsequent hearings, with the presiding judge Antoine Muhima ruling that the trial would continue.

Paul Rusesabagina's adopted daughter Carine Kanimba have protested against his arrest, calling it politically motivated.

Paul Rusesabagina' family is a part of the Bring Our Families Home campaign which advocates to bring home wrongful detainees and hostages.

Paul Rusesabagina's image is featured in a 15-foot mural in Georgetown along with other Americans wrongfully detained abroad.

Paul Rusesabagina has challenged cases of arbitrary detention, torture and extrajudicial killings.

Paul Rusesabagina's family filed a lawsuit against the Rwandan government and high-ranking officials in Rwanda alleging that they conspired to "facilitate and execute an elaborate plot to lure" Paul Rusesabagina from his home in San Antonio to Rwanda "where he would be tortured and illegally detained for the remainder of his life".

Paul Rusesabagina's sentence was commuted to time served with schedule for release on 25 March 2023.

Paul Rusesabagina's story was first told in Philip Gourevitch's book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, which was published in 1998.