What the Arrest of Paul Rusesabagina Means for Peace in Rwanda

Rwanda’s history of violence still looms over its people’s memory. More than 25 years after the end of the Rwanda genocide, political tensions and growing concerns over civil rights are once again threatening the fabric of peace in the country. 

Rusesabagina lecturing at the University of Michigan in 2014 in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide. University of Michigan’s Ford School. CC BY-ND 2.0

Paul Rusesabagina, the former manager of the Hotel de Mille Collines in Kigali, Rwanda, was arrested in August 2020. During his time as hotel manager, he saved 1,268 lives during the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Touted as a human rights advocate, he is now being charged with murder, arson and terrorism. Rwanda, still reeling from the heinous ethnic violence that spread across the country 26 years ago, once again finds itself on edge.

It has been more than a quarter of a century since up to 800,000 people were killed in the Rwanda genocide. Many of those slaughtered were part of the country’s Tutsi minority, which was ethnically targeted by Hutu extremists. The international community, including the United Nations, failed to take swift enough action to prevent the further spread of violence, which continued from April to July 1994. Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon even publicly expressed shame over the organization's failure to prevent the genocide during a 2014 commemoration ceremony in Rwanda.

In the time since, the country has tried to embark on a reconciliation process to ensure that nothing of such nature will ever occur again. Rusesabagina has since enjoyed international attention for his actions during the genocide. The 2004 film “Hotel Rwanda,” based on the Hotel de Mille Collines, received widespread critical acclaim and catapulted Rusesabagina to global celebrity status. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards, and President George W. Bush even awarded Rusesabagina the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005. 

An estimated 800,000 people were killed in the Rwanda genocide, many of whom were part of the country’s Tutsi minority population. Fanny Schertzer. CC BY-SA 3.0

However, the attention generated by “Hotel Rwanda” and Rusesabagina was not inherently positive, especially for the ruling party of Rwanda. President Paul Kagame, the leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, has often been described as a dictator. He has been in power for over 20 years and has been the target of international criticism, including from Rusesabagina. Kagame’s actions toward quelling dissent have become the main focus of scrutiny, especially the jailing of political rivals like Shima Diane Rwigara and Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza. In 2018, an annual European Union human rights report highlighted the presence of civil rights violations in Rwanda, allegations that Kagame wrote off as being “ridiculous.” 

Rusesabagina himself is an ardent critic of Kagame. In 2007, he claimed that Kagame was responsible for the assassination of former President Juvenal Habyarimana, whose plane was shot down in 1994. Habyarimana's death created more anti-Tutsi sentiment in Rwanda, galvanizing Hutu extremists to take to the streets and plunging the country into violence. Rusesabagina claimed that Kagame’s possible role in Habyarimana’s assassiniation made him responsible for the hundreds of thousands killed during the genocide. 

Now, Rusesabagina is the latest critic to be targeted by the Kagame regime. Rusesabagina, who now lives in San Antonio, was traveling to Burundi to speak to a congregation regarding his experience during the Rwanda genocide. Little did he know that this was a lie, and he was falling into a trap set by Kagame that would lead to his arrest. Rusesabagina had a layover in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, before boarding a flight that he thought was heading to Burundi. In Dubai he met Constantin Niyomwungere, the pastor of the congregation Rusesabagina was supposed to speak to. Together, they took a chartered jet intended for Bujumbura in Burundi. However, when the plane landed, Rusesabagina did not find himself in Bujumbura. Instead, he was in the Rwandan capital of Kigali, where he was immediately arrested by law enforcement officials. 

Rusesabagina’s arrest is much more than a simple plot by an authoritarian to eliminate critics; it is a reminder of how fragile the peace and reconciliation process can be. Since the Rwanda genocide, the country has made immense progress in improving living standards. In 2019, life expectancy in Rwanda was 69 years, compared to just 31 years in 1995. Women make up 61% of the country’s legislature, the highest proportion of women holding public office in the world. Literacy rates went from just under 60% in the early 1990s to 73% in 2018. Yet, as Rusesabagina’s arrest shows, Rwanda is still has a lot to overcome to fulfill its vision of a post-genocide future. 

Rusesabagina benefited from global visibility that not only catapulted him to fame, but brought attention to Rwanda and the 1994 genocide. His arrest is known because he is known. However, the Kagame administration has a pattern of arresting critics and accusing them of conspiracy against the state. Rusesabagina is just one of many in an increasing number of human rights violations that threaten the landscape of Rwandan peace.

The Rwanda genocide provides a stark reminder of how far the world is yet to come in genocide prevention and reconciliation. There have been U.N. investigations and tribunals, Hollywood glamour and award shows since then. Yet, violence does not crawl back to the shadows when the world shines a spotlight on it. Rather, the international community needs to learn from its mistakes and make sure that Paul Rusesabagina’s arrest does not open a new opportunity for another moment of mass violence.

Aerex Narvasa

Aerex is a current student at Occidental College majoring in Diplomacy and World Affairs with a minor in East Asian Studies. He is passionate about sharing people’s stories through writing, and always strives to learn about new places and cultures. Aerex loves finding new music and exploring his hometown of Los Angeles in his free time.

The Environmental Cost of Entertainment

We often look forward to when we can slip from reality into the atmosphere provided by a movie, concert, or football game. But what is the real cost behind the $60 ticket?

As the COP25 summit comes to an inconclusive close and the number of scientific reports being released on the urgency behind climate change continue to increase, action is necessary or disaster is imminent. Some activities are more glaringly environmentally unfriendly. You know driving your car releases pollutants, you can even see it leaving your vehicle. But there is a whole industry built around letting us all escape, being entertained through sports, or movies and music, so we don’t have to think about our problems for a moment. Only these activities have a huge environmental cost.

 Hollywood is an obvious place to start. Movies not only cost millions of dollars to make but are extremely resource dependent. A study found that a single hour of television produced in the UK emits 13 metric tons of carbon dioxide. That is just carbon emissions, separate from food waste from catering, large energy uses on generators, resources used in building sets, and environmental degradation from filming in remote locations. For example, sets are often made out of lauan, a lightweight plywood that is harvested from rainforests. A UCLA study in 2006 found that a single sound stage results in the destruction of 4000 hectares of rainforest. In the US, over 1200 films and television series are produced in a single year. Solutions exist. Non-resources intensive options could be redistributing waste though donations, recycling, and composting. Reducing energy use or finding alternatives, minimizing transportation, and reusing wastewater. Even getting rid of plastic water bottles on film sets would decrease the environmental footprint.

 The music and sport industries do little better. Events that revolve around stadiums, world-class concerts, super bowls, even your average Saturday afternoon college football game, leave wakes of endless energy use, transportation fumes, and trash cans full of uneaten hotdogs and coke cans. A study done by Julie’s Bicycle found that 43% of the music industry’s environmental impact is from audience transportation to the venue. This is even more true at music festivals or sporting events that span multiple days or even weeks. Estimations say that average numbers for a well-attended music festival produce 212,000 pounds of waste per day, use upwards of 16,000 gallons of fuel just to power generators, and over 78,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions just in attendee travel (could be doubled if included staff, artist, vendors, engineering etc.).  For sports, the Olympics are a major environmental question. Not only do more than a half million people travel to one location from every corner over the world, cities take on major reconstruction projects for one event. In Rio, the 2016 Olympics emitted over 3.5 million tons of C02, not including the 7 years of construction, and had major issues with water pollution.

 Even entertainment in our own homes can have a negative environmental effect. Studies show that watching 30 minutes of Netflix is equivalent to driving almost 4 miles. That might not seem like a lot, but if you binge watch all of Harry Potter, that is almost 20 hours of screen time or 160 miles. Maybe on average you stream an hour of television every day that is almost 3000 miles in one year or the equivalent of driving all the way across the US. Spotify is not much better. Transmitting music to streaming sites is thought to generate between 200 to 350 million kilograms of greenhouse gases.  A large portion of Spotify’s carbon footprint comes from data centers, basically the energy that powers the internet. They have recently reduced their emissions by relocating servers to the Google Cloud which uses more renewable energy and buys carbon offsets. Even so, data centers as a whole account for 2 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

 The entertainment industry is only growing. The increase in access to movies and music through streaming services has dramatically changed the culture surrounding live events. Let’s be conscious about how we choose to consume entertainment. 

DEVIN O’DONNELL’s interest in travel was cemented by a multi-month trip to East Africa when she was 19. Since then, she has continued to have immersive experiences on multiple continents. Devin has written for a start-up news site and graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Neuroscience.