Real 'Hotel Rwanda' manager speaks

With around 30 guns pointed as his head, half-Hutu/half-Tutsi former Mille Collines Hotel General Manager Paul Rusesabagina refused to accept a weapon to murder his wife, four children and 26 of his Rwandan neighbors at the start of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. \nHe responded instead, "Listen, sir. Myself, I don't know how to use guns, and I don't see any reason why to kill that many people."\nOne-hundred days of conflict cost the lives of more than one million Tutsis as the Hutus stampeded through the Rwandan countryside, hacking off limbs with machetes, clubbing civilians to death and executing their Tutsi neighbors by tossing grenades into their homes. Rusesabagina survived the remainder of genocide, and his ability to use words as weapons helped save the lives of 1,268 Tutsis and Hutu moderates hiding within the Mille Collines Hotel.\nRuseasbagina shared that story and more during a lecture and book signing at Franklin College Tuesday evening that was attended by a standing-room-only crowd of more than 300 students, faculty and other guests. The content of his presentation more or less followed the action of "Hotel Rwanda," a film based on the same story, although Rusesabagina's chit-chat with a Hoosier audience strayed slightly from the direct quotes scripted in his autobiography "An Ordinary Man."\n"In my life I never give up, I never give up, I never give up, and I don't think I will; I've always come up with a solution," Rusesabagina said after he signed about 100 copies of his book. "I have my hope, and my morale is very much up because today at least people are willing to do something."\nAfter the assassination of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and neighboring Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira the morning of April 6, 1994, the only barrier between the military, armed Hutu militias and the Rwandan people were 2,700 United Nations peacekeepers from Belgium instructed \nnot to intervene in the conflict. America and other Western superpowers refrained from stopping what became a genocide at its onset because of a recent incident where U.S. military Blackhawk Helicopters were shot down in the Somali capitol of Mogadishu and 18 supporting U.S. Army Rangers were killed by mobs in the streets.\nRusesabagina said the withdrawal of U.N. peacekeepers from Rwandan schools and churches, the few institutions able to spare large groups of Tutsi refugees from day one of the genocide, resulted in the beginning of a mass slaughter that the world acknowledged but turned its back to. He said Hutu militia men established check-points across Rwanda on the backs of butchered civilians and the Rwandan Army served only to regulate the carnage to a more manageable level.\n"I think being apathetic means that you do not care about what is going on around you," Rusesabagina said. "And in saying that you don't care, remember one thing: Whatever happens to your neighbor might also end up happening to you because you're not excluded."\nFranklin College Campus Minister David Weatherspoon said he believes the happenings within Africa are important stories for Americans to hear because "all people in general" matter. He called Rusesabagina a hero for not folding up his tent when forced to make life or death decisions, and he called on all college students to expand their learning beyond the classroom.\n"I hope our students would be able to see that these classes (they're) studying and the purpose behind their degree isn't just to get an 'A,' but it's to make a real difference in the world," Weatherspoon said. "We can only aspire to ever be the kind of hero he has been and hopefully never have to live through those kinds of conditions. Realize what life is worth, and then go out there and try to make a difference in other people's lives."\nRusesabagina stressed to the audience the importance of understanding the thin boundary between Tutu and Hutsi was nonexistent due to a proud national Rwandan identity, intermarriage and the close-knit living conditions of the two cultural groups that often placed one next door to the other. Tutsis were referred to as "cockroaches" by the Hutus during their bloodbath, and the genocide was considered the social "extermination" of an ethnic "infestation." \nIndianapolis resident and nurse Peggy Geis said she traveled to Franklin College to hear Rusesabagina speak about people, humanity and those that were killed. She said she believes America is responsible for the Rwandan genocide to a certain extent because U.S. leaders knew of the carnage but did nothing to prevent the deaths of a million and the displacement of millions more.\n"We could ignore something terrible that is happening, and the next thing you know, it is out of hand, which is what happened there," Geis said. "It snowballed, and the next thing you know it was a national and international horror that we all ignored. It could happen in any country, even ours, if we listen to people telling us lies or making us bigoted or bias"