are colleges and universities unwittingly providing a platform to a tutsi genocide revisionist-1

8/6/2019 Are Colleges and Universities Unwittingly Providing a Platform to a Tutsi Genocide Revisionist-1

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Are Colleges and Universities in North America Unwittingly Providing a Platform to a

Tutsi Genocide Revisionist?

Since 2004 in the United States and in Canada, Paul Rusesabagina, the man uponwhom Don Cheadles character inHotel Rwanda is based, has been celebrated as the

Oskar Schindler of the Tutsi genocide. In 2002, when Terry George, the films producer,sat down with him to write the script for the film, Rusesabagina was living in Belgium as

an ordinary man. Two years later when the film got three Oscar nominations, he wascatapulted into prominence. According to the films narrative and that ofAn Ordinary

Man, the autobiography he co-wrote with Tom Zoellner, Rusesabagina saved 1268 Tutsis

and moderate Hutus who had taken refuge at the hotel he managed. For that, he hasamassed prestigious awards, among them the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which put

him in the company of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Simon Wiesenthal; the National Civil

Rights Museum Freedom Award, which put him in the company of Nelson Mandela andElie Wiesel; and the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award, which put him in the

company of Rosa Parks and Mother Theresa. Not surprisingly, he has become one of the

most sought-after speakers in colleges and universities across the United States andCanada. According to Tom Zoellner in the March 6, 2009 issue ofThe Lawrentian, aLawrence University student newspaper, Rusesabagina had by then spoken at more than

200 colleges and universities in the United States alone. At least two of the institutions in

the United States where he has spoken (Loyola University Chicago and GustavusAdolphus College) and one in Canada (University of Guelph) granted him honorary

doctorates. In November 2009, Boston University installed him as a Martin Luther King,

Jr. Fellow. Indeed, to denounce Rusesabagina as a revisionist of the Tutsi genocide thevery genocide upon which his reputation rests would seem to be the ultimate irony. Yet

he is, unequivocally. Why college and university communities in North America have not

taken note of this is mind-boggling. Perhaps it takes a Tutsi genocide survivor or a person

who lost loved ones to the genocide simply because they happened to be Tutsi to decodeRusesabaginas revisionist discourse.

On November 11,2008, at Birmingham-Southern College, I, together with

eight or so other people who, like me, had had relatives killed in the genocide simplybecause they were Tutsi, listened to him for one long hour as he narrated, with many

distortions and omissions, the history that led to the genocide. In one glaring distortion of

Rwandas history of peonage, he said that for decades the minority Tutsi tribe did, withthe complicity of Belgian colonialists, enslave the majority Hutu tribe. In shock and

disbelief I heard him prevaricate, Hutu in Kinyarwanda means slave, and added that

Hutus who killed Tutsis in the genocide were striking back for the many years of theirenslavement. Throughout the entire talk, not once did he use the phrases the Tutsi

genocide or the genocide against Tutsis, preferring instead to use phrases like the

Rwandan genocide, the genocide in Rwanda, or simply the genocide. When he

ended his speech, the more than 1000 students and faculty members in attendance gavehim a long standing ovation while we those of us who had lost relatives in the genocide

sat quietly in pain, a pain wrought by the irony of the moment: students and faculty

unwittingly applauding a Tutsi genocide revisionist. When it was time for the Q&A phaseof the presentation, I tried hard to compose myself so as to sound coherent but failed

miserably. With a shaky voice I asked him if the Rwandan genocide he kept referring

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to in his speech meant the same thing as the Tutsi genocide. Instead of answering my

question, he went into a 30-minute rambling tirade against the current Rwandan

government, leaving no time for others in my group to ask their questions.Since that night, I have rereadAn

Ordinary Man and have watchedHotel Rwanda again to see if they contain any hints of

his revisionism. To be sure, both the autobiography and the film call the genocide what itwas: the genocide against Tutsis. However, since becoming famous following the popular

acclaim of the film, his discourse on the genocide has changed drastically, without much

of his North American audience realizing it. He now says that because the genocideclaimed the lives of Hutus and Tutsis, it should not to be called the Tutsi genocide but

rather the Rwandan genocide. Indeed, that kind of claim is tantamount to saying that

since the German Nazi government sought to exterminate certain German groups, for

example persons with disabilities, homosexuals, and Jehovahs Witnesses, the Jewishgenocide should be known by another name, say the German genocide. What

Rusesabagina does not take into account, and deliberately so, is the notion of intent

intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as

Article 2 of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime ofGenocide states in its definition of a genocide. The killing of Tutsis that started in April

1994, Rusesabagina should be reminded, was part of a government plan to wipe them offthe face of Rwandan territory. InHotel Rwanda, which was produced before he adopted

his revisionism, there is a scene that speaks to the premeditated nature of the killings.

Early in the film, wooden crates full of machetes are accidentally discovered machetes

that the Hutu government had ordered from China to be used to exterminate all Tutsis inRwanda. What is particularly hurtful and heart-rending for

those of us who lost loved ones to the genocide is that Rusesabagina, in his speeches and

interviews, places responsibility of the genocide on Paul Kagame, the very man who ledhis troops to end it. In an interview with Keith Harmon Snow, a freelance journalist who

has called the Tutsi genocide a mythology, Rusesabagina used the example of one

Robert Kajuga, a Tutsi who was president of the infamous interahamwe, as the Hutumilitia was called, to support his claim. Here is an excerpt from the interview, with

Snows editorial notes.

KHS: Was Robert Kajuga a Tutsi?

PR: Yes, Kajuga was a Tutsi.

KHS: How can that be? The Interahamwe, according to the common portrayals of

genocide in Rwanda, were a bunch of murderous Hutus with machetes

PR: How could that be? That is a problem. Because Kagame had infiltrated the

[Habyarimanas] army [FAR], and the militias, everywhere; he [Kagame] had his ownmilitia within a militia.

KHS: Are you saying that Robert Kajuga was one of those infiltrators?

PR: Among many others

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KHS: So you then say that Kagame had something to do with orchestrating what peopleknow as the genocide in Rwanda, which was those now famous 100 daysor three

months as you call itof killing.

PR: What do you think?Clearly, using Kajugas Tutsi identity to absolve the extremist Hutu government

of having carried out the genocide is equivalent to saying that since some of the kapos inJewish concentration camps were Jews, the blame for the Holocaust should not be placed

on the German Nazi government alone.

No, there is no irony in denouncing Rusesabagina as a Tutsi genocide

revisionist. What is ironical is that he has been provided a platform, of all places inuniversities and colleges in the United States and Canada. What is also ironical is that

some of the universities and colleges where he has spoken have genocide studies

programs whose faculty and students have not raised a finger to protest their institutionsinvitation of him. Of course there has been an exception. Deborah E. Lipstadt, Professor

of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University and author ofDenying the Holocaust, knows something about Rusesabaginas revisionism. In 2007after she had heard him speak at her school, she wrote on her blog to decry what she

called a new form of [Tutsi] genocide denial. She said, What will surprise most

readers of this blog it certainly surprised me is that one of the people who has been

active in spreading this form of denial is Paul Rusesabagina.Surely, the colleges and universities that have

invited and continue to invite Rusesabagina to speak on their campuses must not be

aware that he is a Tutsi genocide revisionist, for if they knew, they would not providehim a platform. Free speech should have its limits, even in academia. In 2007 when

Columbia University invited Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian

president, to speak on its campus, there was an uproar that was justified. In somecountries, for example Poland, Germany, and Austria, Holocaust denial is a crime

punishable by a prison sentence. David Irving, whom Deborah E. Lipstadt wrote about inDenying the Holocaust, served a prison sentence in Austria after pleading guilty to thecrime. In Rwanda, where Tutsi genocide denial is also a crime, Rusesabagina would have

to answer for his revisionism in a court of law if he were to step in the country.

Could Rusesabaginas

deliberately vague diction in his speeches on college campuses be the reason why hisrevisionism has not been decoded? At Birmingham-Southern College where I heard him

speak, he told his audience that the best and worst weapons in life are our words. If, as

he claims, he used words adeptly to ward off Hutu militia and military bent on killingTutsis and moderate Hutus who had taken refuge at the hotel he managed, he is now

using a three-word phrase, the Rwandan genocide, that only few in North America

and these include survivors and relatives of victims of the Tutsi genocide can decode asdenying that genocide.

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