Rwandan Hero Accused of Funding Terror

Those who’ve been watching Rwandan politics at all over the past decade will almost certainly have seen this one coming. Paul Rusesabagina, whose heroic actions were made famous by the movie “Hotel Rwanda,” has been a persona non grata in Rwanda for some time. Now, Martin Ngoga, Rwanda’s general prosecutor, says that Rusesabagina sent money to the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda. Leaders who are in Rwandan custody, he says, have confirmed it. What’s more, since it would be best if everything could be tied up in one tidy package, Ngoga asserts that Rusesabagina is also engaged in a conspiracy to topple the Rwandan government with Victoire Ingabire, an opposition leader who is in custody.

But this isn’t about terrorism or funding rebel groups; it is — and it has always been — about the genocide narrative. Rusesabagina is a moderate Hutu who saved lives and he has long sought to draw attention to the fact that the civil war made things a bit more complex than the Kagame regime would like to admit: though not on the same scale and not as a clearly organized project, Tutsis also killed Hutus en masse and often in reprisal. Rusesabagina — along with many other enemies of the regime — has, for many years, called for a public accounting of human rights abuses by all sides during the Rwandan civil war, the genocide, and the aftermath of both.

In Rusesabagina’s words, “This is Kagame trying to clean all the bushes around him. He has silenced all his critics, some are in prison and some have been killed. I am the only person remaining.”

Articles on these charges against Rusesabagina are here and here.

I’ve also recently published an article on Rusesabagina’s heroism.