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The news that Paul Rusesabagina had been arrested for “terrorism” in Rwanda appeared and disappeared just as quickly on the news. If anyone remembers the day after the headlines, it probably has to do with the fact that it was the hotel manager who during the 1994 genocide of nearly a million Tutsis in Rwanda managed to keep 1,200 people safe at the hotel in Rwanda. luxury Mille Collines in the center of Kigali. Subsequently, the genocide appeared to be a betrayal of the so-called world community: UN troops on the ground were unable to intervene, especially after the massacre of ten Belgian soldiers.
Rusesabagina resorted to all methods: bribes, alcohol, lies, farts for politicians. But when the genocide regime fell a few months later, all of her “guests” were alive. The story was told in 2004 in the Oscar nominated film “Hotel Rwanda” with Don Cheadle as Rusesabagina. The description of his efforts in the film later became a problem, when details of the less noble tricks Rusesabagina resorted to came to light, as did the efforts of others. But the result was the same: 1,200 lives saved.
The development of Rwanda during Warlord Kagame in the 26 years since he came to power has sometimes been seen as a success story. But in recent times, there have been reports of threats and imprisonment of opposition figures, as well as strange deaths in prison. In principle, criticism of the ruling party is prohibited. Rusesabagina is among those who did not hesitate to criticize Kagame, and a special circumstance regarding his arrest is that he tells his family that he was kidnapped in Dubai and taken to Rwanda.
Your case fits into a clear trend
He has Belgian citizenship and a residence permit in the United States, but neither of these countries has acted openly on his cause. His case fits into a clear trend: today’s totalitarian rulers can kidnap nasty dissidents anywhere in the world. We can remember the kidnapping of Gui Minhai by China in Thailand or the Saudi murder of journalist Khashoggi on Turkish soil.
The kidnapping of whom preferably anywhere that violated international law was a movement that gained new momentum during George W. Bush’s “war on terror” when “black prisons” were established and the Geneva Convention explicitly trampled on. In “Guantanamo Diary” (2015), Mohamedou Ould Slahi recounts how he was arrested as a suspected al-Qaeda sympathizer in Mauritania in 2002, taken to Jordan and Afghanistan where he was interrogated (and allegedly tortured) before being imprisoned at Guantanamo. He was released after 14 years. Ironically, Rusesabagina received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George W Bush in 2005.
After the fall of the wall and until September 11, during the same period as the genocides in Rwanda and Srebrenica, there was at the same time a hope for that new world order, based on legal rules, and where countries are bound by compromises. mutual economic. For a moment there was the possibility of a different kind of world politics, which would now be something completely different from the “end of history.” That utopia is getting farther and farther away. But every time we – that is, those of us who still live in democracies – allow leaders like Kagame to sideline all human rights agreements, we are nipping at another piece of our own freedom. Paul Rusesabagina is unintentionally back in the middle of the great game about the kind of world we live in.
Read more texts by Ola Larsmo.
