Endowed Public Program of Armenian Heritage Foundation, sponsor of
Armenian Heritage Park on the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, Boston
Faneuil Hall
20 October, 2011
Charlie Clements
Tonight I have an easy task. It is my honor to introduce a man – Paul Rusesabagina -- who needs no introduction. If you have not seen the movie Hotel Rwanda , you have probably heard of it. It is a film about humanity in the midst of horror. About a manager of a hotel, who managed to save hundreds of lives by standing up to, cajoling, bribing, and tricking perpetrators while their colleagues took hundreds of thousands of other lives in the genocide that gripped Rwanda in 1994.
Paul is invariably referred to as the ‘hero of Hotel Rwanda,’ but it is a label he does not wear comfortably. It is not a label he has or would have chosen for himself. Each time Paul receives a humanitarian award, he faces more criticism from Rwandans who have complained he is an “opportunist, a liar, an imposter, a revisionist, a traitor, a defender of mass murderers, a man profiting from the blood of a million victims.”
Yet you have men like Terry George, who directed the film Hotel Rwanda, who traveled to Rwanda to meet with survivors of the genocide, many of whom described in detail how Paul was responsible for their survival in that dangerous time. Sometime around the 12th anniversary of the genocide, the President Kagame of Rwanda , turned on Paul Rusesabagina unleashing a smear campaign by journalists and politicians that has not abated.
He receives frequent death threats.
What turned Paul from a hero to a villain was daring to criticize President Kagame in public in a regime that brooks no criticism. A former U.S. Ambassador in a neighboring country had to say this about Rwanda : “Today, journalists and former high-level leaders who have broken with Kagame have "disappeared," been shot in South Africa , or been imprisoned in Rwanda . Even an American attorney who sought to defend a Rwandan opposition candidate was briefly imprisoned. Censorship is widespread, and some citizens have been imprisoned for suggesting that Tutsis have killed Hutus for ethnic reasons, just as Hutus have undoubtedly killed Tutsis.” When the history of this era is finally written, Paul may be regarded as a hero, not for what he did in Hotel Rwanda, but for his outspokenness afterwards in the face of constant attempts to silence him.
We do not tolerate our heroes turning their criticism on us. Let me remind you that LIFE magazine who adored the Rev Martin Luther King as a Nobel laureate called his famous speech at Riverside Church, in which Dr. King turned against the Vietnam war -- "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” The day after that speech, the Washington Post declared the youngest Nobel laureate in history had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”
We turn on our heroes who don’t ‘stay in their place.’
It has never been Paul Rusesabagina’s nature to stay in his place. He would not have saved lives in the hotel had he stayed in his role as hotel manager. We are not here tonight to debate or discuss the reality of Rwanda today nor its leadership. But we are here tonight to hear someone who has courageously committed his recent life to truth, reconciliation and sustainable peace in Rwanda and the Great Lakes region of Africa and continues to do so at great risk.
I am proud to introduce a man I know and admire, a man who perhaps more than anyone I know embodies those words written by a Greek playwright thousand five hundred years ago, when Aeschylus told us, “He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
I think what compels Paul Rusesabagina is that in his own despair, against his will he has been graced with the wisdom to speak truth to power.
Please welcome Paul Rusesabagina, recently announced as the winner of the 2011 Lantos Human Rights Prize.
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