264: Hotel Rwanda with Jens Heycke

00:02:05:26 – 00:02:19:21
Dan LeFebvre
Let’s start, as we often do on this podcast, by taking a step back and looking at the movie from an overall perspective. What letter grade would you give Hotel Rwanda for historical accuracy?

00:02:19:24 – 00:02:44:13
Jens Heycke
I would give it a C minus. You know, I’d say, first off, it’s a wonderful movie. The first time I watched it, it was engaging, it was moving, just from a cinematic perspective. I thought it was a really wonderful movie. Most critics agree that it does a good job of showing the Rwanda genocide and bringing that to the minds of people around the world.

00:02:44:13 – 00:03:13:02
Jens Heycke
And, it was a really valuable movie from that perspective. The problem is when you go beyond that, the story itself, and if you look at the movie marquee, the movie poster, it doesn’t say based on a true story like your podcast, it doesn’t say inspired by a true story. It says a true story. And it is manifestly not a true story.

00:03:13:03 – 00:03:42:21
Jens Heycke
Even if we go by poll results, a beginner’s own written account of what what went on in the Hotel Rwanda, there are many, many discrepancies. But over the years, there have been a number of journalists who who have interviewed people at the Hotel Rwanda, starting with someone and the hero in 2008 interviewed 70 some people in the Hotel Rwanda, and every one of them said Paul Rusesabagina was no hero.

00:03:42:23 – 00:03:43:23
Dan LeFebvre
Oh.

00:03:43:25 – 00:04:12:03
Jens Heycke
Odette, who is the young woman? Dr. portrayed in the movie, has said that, yes, he helped save her and her family. But once again, she said that the man is no hero. 2016, a guy by the name of Edward Kihara, who was in the Hotel Rwanda, wrote a book that laid out the whole story, and he interviewed many other fellow survivors.

00:04:12:03 – 00:04:52:06
Jens Heycke
And once again, they all said the same thing. Paul Rusesabagina was no hero. Quite the opposite. He you know, he did some fairly nefarious things just to flesh that out. You know, we can say that these people have been influenced by the Rwandan government, which which is an authoritarian government to a large degree, that they’ve kind of been pressured by that government to, you know, to portray recessive Regina, who was recently arrested and convicted by that government that, you know, they’ve been pressured to portray him in a bad light.

00:04:52:08 – 00:05:17:29
Jens Heycke
But even if we go beyond those people and look at the U.N. people, a neutral third party, they’re saying the same thing. So, for example, Romeo Dallaire, who is the head commander of the U.N. in Rwanda at the time, a webcast I participated in, he called that movie Pure Hollywood crowd. Wow. Those are literally the words you used.

00:05:17:29 – 00:05:40:03
Jens Heycke
I wrote them down at the time because of that. And, you know, just to give you another quote, another U.N. official who was there, a guy by the name of Amadou Diem, he was Captain Amadou Diallo. He said, I was not able to watch the movie beyond a point because I found it so repulsive for its own truthfulness.

00:05:40:06 – 00:05:41:08
Dan LeFebvre
Wow.

00:05:41:11 – 00:05:59:29
Jens Heycke
So now not only are we getting these stories from Rwandans, survivors of the hotel who who may or may not be under pressure from the government, we’re hearing this from from the U.N. people that the movie was completely inaccurate. And we can talk about some of those inaccuracies as we go along.

00:06:00:01 – 00:06:22:02
Dan LeFebvre
Well, we’ll start to get into some of those, because the movie starts in Kigali, Rwanda, in the year 1994. And before we see anything on the screen, we hear radio broadcast from RTL AM, Hutu Power radio, as it’s called. And to summarize the message of the broadcast, it says the Tutsi were collaborators for the Belgian colonists, and they stole our Hutu land.

00:06:22:05 – 00:06:46:06
Dan LeFebvre
Now they’re back and we will wipe out the RPF rebels. And if we jump ahead to the movie a little bit, there is some more explanation when we see Joaquin Phenix, his character, Jack Dalgliesh. He’s chatting with local journalists there named Benedict. And to paraphrase what Benedict tells Jack in the movie, he says the Belgians created the Hutu and Tutsi division by picking people based on their looks.

00:06:46:08 – 00:07:08:10
Dan LeFebvre
Those with thinner noses or lighter skin. He also says the Belgians use the Tutsis to run the country. Then after the Belgians left, they left power to the Hutus. And then the Hutus took revenge on the Tutsis with years of repression. How accurate is the movie’s explanation of how the division between Hutus and Tutsis came to exist?

00:07:08:12 – 00:07:38:26
Jens Heycke
So, you know, on that part it’s actually fairly accurate. Before the colonialists came and actually the Germans were the first colonialists, the Belgians took over just after World War One. But before they came, there were different groups there. Hutus and Tutsis. You know, it may go back centuries. Which group arrived there first, but by the time the colonialists arrived, the distinction was was kind of a nebulous one.

00:07:38:29 – 00:08:06:09
Jens Heycke
Generally speaking, the Tutsis were cattle herders and and the Hutus were farmers. There were some physiological differences or, you know, some differences in appearance, but because there was a lot of intermarriage between the two groups and a Hutu could become the Tutsi and the Tutsi become a Hutu. The those differences were were not you know, they weren’t enough to to really go by.

00:08:06:09 – 00:08:18:08
Jens Heycke
And in fact, during the genocide, there were a lot of Hutus who were killed because they were mistaken for Tutsis and Tutsis who escaped because they had fake identity cards. And so on.

00:08:18:10 – 00:08:42:24
Jens Heycke
What the Belgians did is they came in and they ossified this distinction that which previously had been somewhat nebulous by issuing these identity cards. And there’s some debate as to how exactly they did it early on. Supposedly, they took a census and based it on the number of cattle each person had. If you had 1010 how to cattle, you were Tutsi.

00:08:42:26 – 00:08:44:27
Jens Heycke
If you didn’t, you were a Hutu.

00:08:45:03 – 00:08:47:12
Dan LeFebvre
Okay.

00:08:47:14 – 00:09:20:20
Jens Heycke
And at the same time, later on, at some point, they did seem to hone in on on physiological differences. If you go to the Genocide Museum in Kigali, they have this photograph of them measuring the width of some piece nose with a caliper. So that may have played a role. But when you think about it, the fact that they needed to issue these identity cards says that there wasn’t an obvious difference that you could pick out, you know, if there was a clear racial difference between the two groups, you wouldn’t need an identity card, would you?

00:09:20:22 – 00:09:23:00
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, that’s a good point.

00:09:23:03 – 00:09:57:00
Jens Heycke
The previous hundreds of years are so much back and forth between the two groups that that distinction had really faded. And just to add to it, there’s actually another group in Rwanda that you rarely hear mentioned, the Batwa, who are essentially pygmies. That’s the American word, I think that’s used up there less than 1% of the population. And there’s at least one group of four who are clearly physiologically distinct, who became became Tutsis.

00:09:57:02 – 00:10:18:05
Jens Heycke
So that distinction, you know, it was it was really quite nebulous until until the Belgian came in and issued those identity cards. And then what they did is they they demoted a lot of Hutu chiefs and put Tutsis in positions of power, basically. So so, you know, largely that description was true.

00:10:18:08 – 00:10:25:02
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Okay. And then when the Belgians left, did they who did they leave in power when they left? Was that.

00:10:25:03 – 00:10:53:29
Jens Heycke
Well, the Hutus were the majority. What was interesting is, is for the first 30 years or so of Belgian colonial rule, they distinctly favored the Tutsis over the Hutus. It reversed in the last few years of Belgian rule. They actually flipped it on its head and they started demoting the Tutsi chiefs because they they thought the Tutsis were acting too arrogant and and were kind of agitating for independence.

00:10:54:00 – 00:11:07:17
Jens Heycke
So they they wanted to take the Tutsis down a notch. So so this whole system of preferences that had actually already been flipped on its head by the time the Belgians left and the Hutus took over.

00:11:07:24 – 00:11:36:03
Dan LeFebvre
In the movie, you mentioned his name already. But we get to meet Don Cheadle character, the the main character, Paul Rusesabagina, and he’s the house manager at a hotel in Kigali called The Milk Clean. It’s owned by Belgian company called Sabena, and that’ll come into play later on in the movies timeline. But one night we see Paul and his wife, Tatiana, witness a neighbor across the street being beaten and taken away by soldiers.

00:11:36:10 – 00:12:02:15
Dan LeFebvre
And then later, Paul mentions to his wife, Tatyana, that he’s been currying favor with powerful people at work so he can call in those favors if something ever does happen to his family. And then an important note for the story is that Paul is Hutu, while Tatiana is Tutsi. How does the movie do setting up who Paul and Tatiana recessive binga were so.

00:12:02:16 – 00:12:48:02
Jens Heycke
So this is where it starts to go downhill from the very beginning. We know from recessive beginner’s own book that he was not manager of the milk in the so-called Hotel Rwanda. He was manager of the Diplomat Hotel. The diplomat, which is. But ten minute walk away. So he was never originally the manager of the meal, Colleen. What happened is the hotel, the diplomat, which he did manage, was closed down and more than a week after the genocide started, he went he basically went to the Hotel Milk Inn and declared himself in charge.

00:12:48:04 – 00:13:09:09
Jens Heycke
What had happened is there was a European manager who fled as soon as the genocide started, and she turned over the keys to a guy at the front desk and said, You’re in charge. Here are the keys. Don’t let anybody else have these keys. And this will be important as we get more into the discussion. But. But recessive.

00:13:09:09 – 00:13:20:29
Jens Heycke
Regina was not manager of melancholy. So all this footage of him driving around in this milk all in vain at the beginning. That’s. That’s nonsense. He wasn’t manager of the hotel at the time.

00:13:21:01 – 00:13:45:29
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. I think it does mention hotel diplomat. I think there was a line I remember from the movie. I don’t remember the specifics of it, but he mentioned something about how he used to work at Hotel Diplomat. Now and then. So the impression I got was now he’s working at milk clean. And yes, I think there was also even a brief mention where it shows his boss leaving, but he gives the keys directly to Paul and he’s like, You’re in charge now.

00:13:46:05 – 00:13:48:16
Dan LeFebvre
I have to go to this other hotel.

00:13:48:21 – 00:14:06:12
Jens Heycke
Basically, yeah. That’s that’s absolutely not what happened. The keys were given to a guy by the name of POSA, who was then in charge of the hotel. Paul Rusesabagina shows up a week later and and says, I’m in charge here.

00:14:06:14 – 00:14:14:25
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Well, we’re starting to get some of the the inaccuracy here for sure. That’s a pretty big one to the way just from the way the movie sets everything up.

00:14:14:27 – 00:14:39:27
Jens Heycke
Yeah. No, I’ll grant you some some of the other stuff. And that was correct. Tatiana’s wife was was a Tutsi. And, you know, absolutely no doubt that people across the street from them and all around were being murdered. I mean, you know, one out of seven people in that country was murdered during the genocide. So you would absolutely see that all around you.

00:14:39:29 – 00:15:02:04
Dan LeFebvre
What about the the impression of Paul wanting to garner favor? That was something that I kind of gathered from his dialog there where Tatiana was. I’m part of the reason for this job is like working and working with tourists, working with people coming in or, you know, garnering favor with people who can help if we ever need it.

00:15:02:06 – 00:15:27:28
Jens Heycke
Yeah. So the hotel he did manage the hotel. The diplomat was really the nerve center for the Hutu power movement and a lot of the big figures in that movement. So there’s no question he rubbed shoulders with them and had drinks with them. Whether or not he was doing that to curry favor or to protect people or if they were just as friends is a separate question.

00:15:28:00 – 00:15:50:21
Dan LeFebvre
There is a scene in the movie where we see news reports of the head of the armed forces, General Busi Mungo, and he denies the rumors that the army is training the Hutu militia called the Interahamwe. As I was watching that, the first thing that I thought was he has to be lying because why else would this be included in the movie if he was telling the truth?

00:15:50:27 – 00:16:02:16
Dan LeFebvre
But of course, in the real world, things are not always as obvious as in movies. So can you fill in the gaps of what we don’t see in the movie about who the Interahamwe was?

00:16:02:18 – 00:16:42:04
Jens Heycke
So. So the intro always started off as a youth or youth section of the ruling political party, them Morandi. They sort of morphed into over time into a paramilitary organization. You know, we know from the International War Crimes Tribunal that was happened after the genocide that both the Rwandan military, the FA FA and the French government were not only armed but trained Interahamwe members, which is really quite incredible.

00:16:42:07 – 00:17:00:24
Jens Heycke
We can talk more about the French involvement in all of this as we go along. But yeah, so there’s no question that, you know, there’s a Mungo was, was lying there because both both the Rwandan military and the French military helped train and arm the inter homeboy.

00:17:00:27 – 00:17:03:24
Dan LeFebvre
And also tried to cover it up then to.

00:17:03:27 – 00:17:36:08
Jens Heycke
Yes, absolutely. And you know, an interesting side note, and here is we’re shown in the movie the number two guy in the entire home where they don’t mention Robert Duga, who was the actual president of the homeboy. And just to underscore how arbitrary this Hutu Tutsi difference was, Robert Kabuga was actually had had a Tutsi mother and really a Tutsi father.

00:17:36:10 – 00:17:51:21
Jens Heycke
Only reason he was regarded as a Hutu was by chance. His father got a Hutu identity card early on. So so the head of the Interahamwe was like two thirds Tutsi. Oh, you know, really quite incredible.

00:17:51:24 – 00:18:18:09
Dan LeFebvre
There’s another group that gets mentioned, and they’re simply referred to as the Tutsi rebels. So the way I interpreted it was in the movie was there’s the official Rwandan military, then there’s the Hutu militia, and then there’s this Tutsi militia, these what they call the rebels. And the impression I got was they branded the rebels because the actual military tends to be on the side of the Hutu militia.

00:18:18:11 – 00:18:22:07
Dan LeFebvre
Is that a correct interpretation of the way the movie shows things?

00:18:22:09 – 00:19:03:20
Jens Heycke
Yeah, There’s no question that that the failure of the Rwandan military and the Interahamwe. They often acted hand-in-glove. There were some situations where there were Tutsis who were actually effectively resisting and the Rwandan military would go in and wipe them out and or or start attacking with heavy weapons and then enter a home where would come in afterwards or in other cases that they, the Hutu military or the Rwandan military would actually direct Interahamwe to go in and attack Tutsis.

00:19:03:22 – 00:19:27:22
Jens Heycke
You know, in certain places. I do want to add, you know, it’s interesting in the movie that for some reason they only referred to Tutsi rebels. And, you know, I sometimes was wondering if there wasn’t a political motive, a motivation for that, because the group that we’re talking about is the RPF, the Rwandan Patriotic Front. And they’re not just a random group of rebels at all.

00:19:27:25 – 00:20:00:19
Jens Heycke
The core of the RPF, all its leadership were descendents or people who had fled Rwanda. And, you know, 30, 20, 30, 40 years earlier. And most of them were based in Uganda, and most of them are part of the Ugandan military. So they were highly trained and well armed. A lot of these people literally ripped off their Ugandan military insignia and then went and joined join the RPF and participate in it.

00:20:00:21 – 00:20:17:13
Jens Heycke
Paul Kagame, who was the head of the RPF later on, he was he was high ranking and Ugandan military. So so these weren’t just random rebels, at least at the core. They were actually a sophisticated army that was well organized and well trained.

00:20:17:15 – 00:20:21:18
Dan LeFebvre
Oh, yeah. That’s not the impression I got at all. I mean, because it mentions them being rebels. Yeah.

00:20:21:19 – 00:20:40:23
Jens Heycke
Yeah, it was it you know, there’s no question that they picked up supporters along the way. But the core of the leadership of the RPF, these were sophisticated soldiers, which is, you know, they’re outnumbered like 7 to 1. So they have to be really good at what they’re doing.

00:20:40:25 – 00:21:01:16
Dan LeFebvre
According to the movie, there are two things that kind of sparked the start of the genocide itself. The first is when the Rwandan president signs a peace treaty with the Tutsi rebels and then shortly after that, he’s assassinated. And we don’t really see much of that in the movie, but we hear it through news reports and people telling Paul about it.

00:21:01:18 – 00:21:06:16
Dan LeFebvre
Can you fill in some more historical details around that event?

00:21:06:18 – 00:21:42:12
Jens Heycke
Months before the genocide took place, there were what were called the Arusha Accords, which was a power sharing agreement between the Hutu led government and the RPF. And that led to a lot of agitation within the Hutu led government’s ranks. A lot of people considered Habyarimana, who was president at the time, a traitor for signing those. And in particular, there’s a group called the Coups, centered around actually Habyarimana, his wife and her family, who were really ardent hardliners.

00:21:42:14 – 00:22:09:15
Jens Heycke
And they were very upset that any power would be ceded at all to the Tutsis. They didn’t want that. So so that there was that unrest simmering within the Hutu ranks long before the genocide. And it’s absolutely the case that when Habyarimana, his plane was shot down, that that triggered the genocide. And that’s that’s what really started things off.

00:22:09:18 – 00:22:34:16
Jens Heycke
But there was a lot simmering beneath the surface before that, and it’s still disputed who actually shot down the plane. The Rwandan government to this day claims that it was hardliners within within them or on the that that were responsible for it. But there’s still the French government for a while was claiming that the RPF shot it down.

00:22:34:18 – 00:22:55:09
Dan LeFebvre
Well, I mentioned there were two things that sparked that genocide and that being the first one. And then the second thing that the movie puts forward is kind of similar, what you’re talking about. There was things that were already simmering that talked about the radio broadcasts at the very beginning of the movie. And then this time there’s another radio broadcast that blames the Tutsis for the president’s assassination.

00:22:55:12 – 00:23:04:12
Dan LeFebvre
And the man on the radio gives the code words saying it’s time to cut the trees. And that’s the the code word to start the genocide, basically.

00:23:04:15 – 00:23:31:20
Jens Heycke
Yeah, that was was the actual trigger. You know, they issued that it was a code word cut down the tall trees and that’s that’s when the violence really started off. And the influence of RTL on radio cannot be overstated. It was enormously popular because it was it was a fun radio station. They had lots of lots of like really informal broadcasting.

00:23:31:20 – 00:23:56:06
Jens Heycke
Instead of the normal state radio, there was kind of really stay it and boring RTL and was was kind of dynamic and they played popular Zaire in music and even a lot of Tutsis listened to it because it was just it was good radio, you know, it wasn’t all the hate stuff you hear. There was other content. And so lots of people tuned in and it was hugely influential.

00:23:56:08 – 00:24:24:08
Jens Heycke
Now, a few studies have been done over over the years about RTL Radio showing where the coverage areas were and a few of them correlated the RTL coverage with where the most killings happened and, you know, did statistical studies and found that it was hugely influential, so much so that the UN actually asked the U.S. to try to jam the signal.

00:24:24:10 – 00:25:01:01
Jens Heycke
And it’s it’s actually a very sad story that the United States chose not to do it, partly because amazingly, they didn’t want to they didn’t want to violate Rwanda airspace and Rwandan communication protocols. And also it would cost 80 $500 for each plane flight. So they didn’t want to spend that money, even though at least one of these studies showed that if they had blocked RTL Radio or possibly hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved, at least tens of thousands.

00:25:01:04 – 00:25:15:03
Dan LeFebvre
Wow. I mean, that just that’s a testament to the power of how just the power of words, I mean, and and that to to motivate people in this case, you know, towards terrible actions and hatred.

00:25:15:06 – 00:25:38:02
Jens Heycke
Yeah. In this case, you know, it was not only the inspiration, the hatred that it was spurring for Hutus to kill Tutsis. It was was literally offering practical advice, saying, oh, we know there are a bunch of Tutsis hanging out in this place. You know, you guys go and get them. So it went beyond, you know, simple spurring people to hatred.

00:25:38:02 – 00:25:42:10
Jens Heycke
And it was literally orchestrating part of the genocide.

00:25:42:12 – 00:25:54:12
Dan LeFebvre
So, I mean, you mentioned the code word, you know, cut down the tall trees if they’re literally having these calls to action, like go get these people, why have a code word.

00:25:54:15 – 00:26:19:14
Jens Heycke
You know, that they did a lot of that there. And they did. There was a need or they felt a need to hide what they were doing, at least from from foreign eyes. So there were there were actually some differences in in the Kinyarwanda broadcasts done by RTL. And what they did in French, they were far more explicit and can in Rwanda, but they were always using code words.

00:26:19:20 – 00:26:49:27
Jens Heycke
So in Tierra, homeboy, for example, basically means a bunch of people getting together to talk, to work together. And that was another euphemism. They what they used for killing people, they called it work. It’s like, okay, guys, let’s go to work. There were some some bits of the RTL and broadcasts where they said, you know, be sure you don’t see the Westerners, the foreigners observe, you know, don’t let them observe you doing your work.

00:26:50:00 – 00:27:07:06
Jens Heycke
I killing people and make sure you don’t smile if they see you when you’re doing your work. So they felt a need to to at least hide it a little bit from Western eyes. And that’s why there were a lot of code words used.

00:27:07:08 – 00:27:19:07
Dan LeFebvre
I guess that kind of goes back to the the general of the army hiding that they were helping to train the militia and that aspects too, like this fear of the Western powers almost.

00:27:19:09 – 00:27:51:19
Jens Heycke
Yes. And that, you know, there was a constant need to or they felt a need to keep relations good with the West in particular, particularly with France, which had been a big supporter of theirs for a long time. So so the mere appearance of, you know, basically a white skinned person could deter a lot of interesting leaders. There’s a guy who just lives up the road from me by the name of Carl Wilkins, who’s the only American to stay in Rwanda throughout the genocide.

00:27:51:21 – 00:28:18:03
Jens Heycke
And he went. There was an orphanage near where he was, where the kids in this orphanage were almost certainly going to be killed. And he went there as it was, being surrounded by then to somewhere and and basically camped out in there. He slept overnight in this orphanage. And single handedly, just by appearing there, he deter them from killing all these these orphans.

00:28:18:05 – 00:28:24:26
Dan LeFebvre
Wow. Wow. I mean, that’s yeah. Wow. What a story. I mean, I would like to see a movie about him.

00:28:24:28 – 00:28:49:00
Jens Heycke
Carl Wilkens. Yeah. Yeah, I would, too. You know, it’s. It’s one of the to me, it’s one of the great tragedies of this movie. Is there there were some incredible heroes in the Rwandan genocide, and it doesn’t celebrate any of them. This guy, Carl Wilkens, there was a sleep guard. The head of the Red Cross risked his life many, many times.

00:28:49:02 – 00:29:09:14
Jens Heycke
Captain Dion, who is a Senegalese, Ultimately, he he saved hundreds of people and brought Tutsis to safety. And you never hear his name. He was actually killed at one of the checkpoints. And, you know, he’s in Senegal, is a hero. But outside of Senegal, nobody’s ever heard of this guy.

00:29:09:17 – 00:29:34:23
Dan LeFebvre
We were talking about the the Western powers. And back in the movie, we do see a UN presence in Rwanda. It’s highlighted just before the violence starts as Nick Nolte, his character, the UN’s Colonel Oliver, leads a press conference to celebrate the priest treaty that we talked about earlier, signed by the president. And then we talked about the president being assassinated and subsequently the massacres starting in the movie as this is happening.

00:29:34:24 – 00:29:48:04
Dan LeFebvre
Colonel Oliver says his orders are not to intervene because they’re, quote, peacekeepers and not, quote, peacemakers. What was the UN’s reaction as violence started to break out in Rwanda?

00:29:48:07 – 00:30:21:03
Jens Heycke
The UN really failed in this instance. The individuals on the ground, people like, you know, again, Oliver is a fiction fictional carrier. The character of the actual person was Romeo Dallaire. What they did was absolutely heroic. This guy from Senegal, who I just mentioned, was one of those these guys repeatedly risked their lives to save people, and they really didn’t get any credit in the movie for that, which which is sad.

00:30:21:05 – 00:30:33:07
Jens Heycke
In fact, I interesting side note, you’re Dallaire who is a pretty big figure because Colonel Oliver in the movie they never interviewed him once when they made that movie, they never talk to the guy.

00:30:33:14 – 00:30:34:10
Dan LeFebvre
Wow.

00:30:34:13 – 00:30:42:20
Jens Heycke
One of the major figures in the story that never spoke with him. And I think partly because he were just disagreed with with the.

00:30:42:22 – 00:30:44:16
Dan LeFebvre
What’s really happened.

00:30:44:19 – 00:31:13:26
Jens Heycke
Yeah. So so in terms of how the U.N. reacted, Dallaire before the genocide, he he had somebody high up in the chair, a homeboy who came to him and basically told him what was going on. He said, you know, their weapons caches, they’re they’re compiling a list of Tutsis in Kigali, basically an assassination list. They have a plan to kill Belgian peacekeepers, which turned out to actually happen.

00:31:13:26 – 00:31:38:11
Jens Heycke
They killed ten Belgian peacekeepers. And Dallaire, in a famous fax, was called the Genocide Fax. He fax this to Kofi Annan, who was head a peacekeeping at the UN at the time. And and they brushed him off. They said, oh, you’re not to get involved. Dallaire was sending all these warnings up and nobody was listening to him at the U.N. headquarters.

00:31:38:13 – 00:31:42:00
Jens Heycke
So the U.N. really failed on this one.

00:31:42:02 – 00:32:07:06
Dan LeFebvre
Wow. Well, I think I think I remember a brief mention where Colonel Oliver in the movie does mention that they killed ten of his men or something like that. So it sounds like that part at least happened. But it and are in the movie. They don’t there’s there seems to be no reaction to that that, oh, they killed 1010 soldiers and nothing seems to come of it.

00:32:07:08 – 00:32:28:12
Jens Heycke
Yeah. And that for all we can tell, based on Dillinger’s intelligence that was preplanned and these ten Belgian peacekeepers were actually they were guarding this woman who was the successor to Habyarimana, who was assassinated. So she was assassinated. These Belgian peacekeepers were tortured horribly.

00:32:28:19 – 00:32:51:23
Dan LeFebvre
And until well, at one point in the movie, we see the cameraman, Joaquin Phenix, his character, Jack Dalglish. He goes outside the hotel grounds to shoot some footage, and then he comes back with something showing people literally being cut down by machetes in the streets. His boss, David, makes a call saying that he has footage of a massacre needs to be on the evening news.

00:32:51:26 – 00:33:12:27
Dan LeFebvre
There’s another point in the movie where we hear some news reports on the radio. Someone keeps using the term genocide like events. And then there’s a journalist in the report that actually asked how many genocide like events are needed before It’s simply called a genocide. Did the world learn about the genocide as it was happening? Like the movie seems to imply?

00:33:12:29 – 00:33:42:12
Jens Heycke
They really didn’t. There were a few early reports, but what happened is the the journalists and all the foreigners, as we saw in the movie fairly early on, they all got removed from the country. So saw a week into the genocide. The New York Times was reporting, making these reports that things were kind of getting better. Oh, why did they seem to be getting better is because there were no reporters there to report on what was going on.

00:33:42:15 – 00:34:06:17
Jens Heycke
So, you know, things work were coming out, but the press was portraying it mostly as a civil war and not as an actual genocide until much, much later on. And that part, they really missed that, that it was a true genocide as far as the U.N. and the U.S. goes. There was a reason for them to avoid using that term.

00:34:06:19 – 00:34:22:20
Jens Heycke
And it’s basically the 1948 genocide Convention, which says it compels all signatories to that convention to act if there is a genocide in progress. So nobody wanted to admit that it was a genocide because then they would be compelled to do something.

00:34:22:23 – 00:34:28:20
Dan LeFebvre
Wow. Wow. Compelled to do their job, basically. Yeah.

00:34:28:23 – 00:35:01:01
Jens Heycke
And so neither the UN nor for a while the US wanted that because it’s like, oh, you know, keep in mind that the Somali fiasco, the Black Hawk Down, it just happened a few months before this. So both the U.N. and the U.S. were kind of shell shocked in terms of getting involved in, you know, what looked like difficult internal, you know, squabbles within African countries, because it had ended very badly for a bunch of Bangladeshis and a bunch of Americans and Somali.

00:35:01:04 – 00:35:14:19
Dan LeFebvre
Do you think that played a role that that played a big factor in them deciding to basically out of sight, out of mind, almost? It sounds like like we’re not we’re just going to ignore these any reports coming in because we don’t want to get involved?

00:35:14:22 – 00:35:44:15
Jens Heycke
Yeah, you definitely see in discussions within the Clinton administration that, you know, they were reluctant to act because they felt like after the Somalia incident that there would be no public support for it. And they were probably right. The U.N. finally, first, after cutting the number of troops in the country from 2700 or to about 300, they were going to build back up the force there.

00:35:44:17 – 00:35:54:29
Jens Heycke
Dallaire wanted to build it up to 5000, but the U.N. asked around and they couldn’t find any countries who were willing to contribute troops to that effort. Nobody wanted to get involved.

00:35:55:01 – 00:36:20:20
Dan LeFebvre
Well, you mentioned the 300. And I was actually going to ask, because we do see that in the movie You mentioned, you know, everybody kind of leaving as well. And we see the orders to evacuate all the as the movie puts it, to foreign nationals. There’s some French troops that roll in. At first. Everybody thinks they’re safe in the hotel, but then they realize they’re just there to get the foreign nationals, which the movie makes the point of saying basically all the white people are leaving.

00:36:20:22 – 00:36:41:01
Dan LeFebvre
And meanwhile, more people are showing up to the hotel. So that means there’s even more refugees at the hotel. All the foreign nationals are being evacuated. And that just leaves Paul to figure out what to do with them. And you mentioned the 300 a Colonel Oliver in the movie. He mentions that he’s been given 300 U.N. soldiers for the entire country.

00:36:41:05 – 00:36:59:09
Dan LeFebvre
So the most he can spare for the hotel is for soldiers. Oh, and by the way, they’re also not allowed to shoot anybody. So basically, they’re just there for their presence, whatever good that’s going to do. It sounds like a lot of that the details may may not be accurate, but it sounds like the basic gist there.

00:36:59:10 – 00:37:28:24
Jens Heycke
It is true that they were not allowed to shoot was was correct. The number that were there was understated. It was actually contingent of 8 to 10, ten guys. They also had an APC and armored personnel carrier there at the hotel. So the movie kind of plays down what they what they actually had. And the other thing is they were in constant radio contact with with the U.N., the unit mirror headquarters.

00:37:28:26 – 00:37:47:03
Jens Heycke
So if anything did go down, you know, they could alert them instantly. And that was kind of the defense mechanism, is that they were an early warning. So the fact that there were only a handful of guys there is isn’t necessarily mean, not meaningful because they really were backed by the the whole unit, you know, air.

00:37:47:05 – 00:37:58:00
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. Well, it sounds like from what you were saying earlier with with the guy that, you know, that went to the orphanage. Even just their presence could be enough to help stop a lot.

00:37:58:02 – 00:38:25:14
Jens Heycke
Yes. And, you know, that was the case with with the Red Cross workers to, for example, you know, it didn’t always work. The Red Cross guy ran into really tight situations a few times. But there was definitely certainly within Rwanda military, there was a desire to keep up a good appearance in the face of the Europeans.

00:38:25:16 – 00:38:47:21
Dan LeFebvre
I have to ask you about a sequence of events in the movie. Well, actually, I was I was watching this, actually talked to the TV, and I was like, Paul, you’re a genius for for this approach. It started when Paul was talking to everyone at the hotel saying that they have to call everyone that they know to say good bye and basically shame them into sending some help.

00:38:47:23 – 00:39:06:03
Dan LeFebvre
He also insists that they keep up the look of it being a four star hotel. So he keeps issuing bills to people for staying there. He mentions, you know, what to do if they can’t pay the bill. So it doesn’t seem like he’s really charging, but he’s establishing a paper trail, those in case somebody wants to look for that.

00:39:06:05 – 00:39:31:00
Dan LeFebvre
And it doesn’t stop there because right after that, there’s a scene with General Daisy Mungo who comes to visit the hotel. And Paul mentioned, something about how he overheard the soldiers talking about the Americans continuing to watch the hotel with satellites. And then he compliments the general on keeping his men in line, points to one of his staff, Gregoire, who he can’t even get to work.

00:39:31:02 – 00:39:49:05
Dan LeFebvre
That was a bigger issue because Gregoire seemed to be threatening to let someone know about the Tutsis at the hotel to keep from having to do any work. And so the general helps with that. Did the movie do a good job showing some of these clever tactics that Paul used to keep everyone in the hotel safe?

00:39:49:07 – 00:40:20:11
Jens Heycke
Boy, here again is where the movie really goes wrong. You know, I think there are a lot of cases where where people collectively in the hotel did something and and recessive begin turns out from a weekend to an I, there were a lot of really influential people with diplomatic connections and NGO connections who definitely use those by telephone all over the world.

00:40:20:13 – 00:40:55:02
Jens Heycke
Whether or not they did it at at Rusesabagina’s behest is quite another question. I’m pretty sure from all accounts I read they did it on their own and he wasn’t really such an influence. There. Now the story of Gregoire is, is where we really go on this. Now, this Gregoire, as best I can tell, is this character I referred to before the real life person named Passer who is actually supposed to be in charge of the hotel after the European manager left.

00:40:55:05 – 00:41:23:20
Jens Heycke
And it’s clear that recessive begin. Who holds a grudge against this guy because of the way he’s portrayed in the movie? Even in recessive begin his account. He did not occupy the presidential suite. He he occupied the manager’s residence, which he was entitled to do because he had been appointed interim manager. Oh, and part of the friction was the one recessive between arrived at the hotel and said, I’m in charge.

00:41:23:25 – 00:41:47:21
Jens Heycke
And again, this is April 12th. So. So the genocide started on the six or six days after the genocide starts. Recessive you shows up, says I’m in charge here. And Portia says, No, you’re not. And it was only then the that recessive begin communicated with Belgium and got them to send this fax that said that’s put him effectively in charge.

00:41:47:23 – 00:42:16:09
Jens Heycke
And at that point Parson did hand the keys over to him. But I feel like in the way that he was in this movie, it was kind of a little revenge played by recessive akin against him because it’s, you know, clearly does not correspond to facts. And we have testimony from other people in the hotel who said that Portia shared his room with many, many other people and and that he was very helpful in the hotel.

00:42:16:09 – 00:42:22:25
Jens Heycke
He was not this this crazed Hutu militant, as he’s portrayed to be in the movie.

00:42:22:27 – 00:42:40:05
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, he’s he definitely does seem like somebody who will turn on them at a moment’s notice. And he’s just using the situation at the the even goes down to, you know, mentions of him taking all the beer and things like that where he just seems to be enjoying life.

00:42:40:07 – 00:43:20:23
Jens Heycke
You know, I see that probably as payback. Oh, no, no. When it comes to the bills that he’s distributing, you know, that’s that’s another really interesting point here, because we have first of all, we Halifax. So there’s actually a paper trail on some of the stuff. It’s not just a he said they say it said thing because we have testimony that they said as a lot of people and a lot of people testified the recessive beginner said pay up or I’m kicking you out of the hotel and we have a fax from from Sabina to recessive bacuna that says don’t charge people for food or staying in the hotel.

00:43:20:25 – 00:43:33:28
Jens Heycke
On the other hand, we have multiple faxes from people in the hotel complaining to the Red Cross saying a beginner’s charging us and he’s threatening to throw us out if we don’t pay.

00:43:34:00 – 00:43:49:27
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, that’s a that’s a very different picture than the movie paints. I mean, the impression I got from the movie, as I mentioned, is very he’s charging the bills, but like, if you can’t pay it, that’s that’s fine. We just want this paper trail and so it still looks like a hotel.

00:43:49:29 – 00:44:14:04
Jens Heycke
So. So we have one account, for example, that tells us that if you could pay a bit, he would let you stay in the hall. And if if you could pay even less, you you were put down by the pool, but to your room you had to pay full bore. And this is based on on a lot of interviews.

00:44:14:06 – 00:44:39:24
Jens Heycke
Once again, maybe the Rwandan government is is pressuring people to to testify this way. But these are interviews we’ve had over the years. Journalist Joshua Hammer from the New York Times, who did a story, story 2021, where he interviewed people from the hotel. And and we just see these things confirmed over and over. It’s it’s really troubling.

00:44:39:27 – 00:44:58:29
Dan LeFebvre
You mentioned the facts and that comes in the movie. It comes from Sabena, which is the company that owns the hotel. And I wanted to ask about that because there is a moment in the movie where we see Paul calling up the president of Sabena, a guy named Mr. Tones in movie, and he’s obviously horrified by what’s going on.

00:44:59:01 – 00:45:13:29
Dan LeFebvre
We find out later that Tillman’s called the French president that got the militia to leave the hotel alone for a little while longer. So basically, Sabina helped pull some strings to help protect the people in the hotel. Did they really do that?

00:45:14:02 – 00:45:45:25
Jens Heycke
You know, that’s hard to say. We do know that the French had enormous pull with with the Rwandan military. Once again, the French had played a big role in supplying them over the years. So they wanted to keep those relations good. So that’s altogether possible. On the other hand, we also have held a lot of accounts of pressure that Rome, Romeo Dallaire and the U.N. was exerting on the Rwandan military to keep them keep the hotel safe.

00:45:45:27 – 00:46:09:19
Jens Heycke
The movie portrays it as a single handed effort by by recessive begin to save this hotel. The reality is there were a lot of other factors involved, including the fact that there were important people in the Hutu government who had relatives who were staying in the hotel. So so this guy, Robert Kabuga, that I mentioned before, his brother was in the hotel.

00:46:09:25 – 00:46:36:12
Jens Heycke
So there were a lot of incentives for both Interahamwe and the Rwandan military to save that hotel. Beyond pressure from from the French government, there was U.N. pressure. There was the fact that it was a meeting place for both both sides. The fact that there were relatives of some influential people living there. So a lot of other factors really came into play.

00:46:36:15 – 00:46:53:23
Dan LeFebvre
Wow. Yeah, that’s that’s very different than the impression I got in the movie where it seems like they’re just waiting to get into the hotel to get. I think they use the term traitors, you know, and and of the people in the hotel, it’s a very different impression than I got watching the movie, that’s for sure.

00:46:53:25 – 00:46:56:06
Jens Heycke
Yeah.

00:46:56:09 – 00:47:13:06
Dan LeFebvre
Near the end of the movie, there is a flurry of activity that happens. Paul’s suggestion of having people at the hotel ask anyone they know for help seems to work. Colonel Oliver shows up and at the hotel he lets them know that there have been some exit visas issued by countries for some of the people at the hotel.

00:47:13:06 – 00:47:36:14
Dan LeFebvre
Not everybody, but some of the people. So they in a caravan of U.N. trucks to be taken to safety. Included in that are Paul and Tatiana, his family. But at the last minute, Paul decides he can’t everyone still at the hotel so he stays behind the U.N. caravan ends up being ambushed, probably because Gregoire alerted the militia. We see driving off.

00:47:36:17 – 00:47:54:07
Dan LeFebvre
They only survive because Paul calls in a favor with General Wesley Mungo, whose troops clear out the entire Hanway militia so the trucks don’t ever reach their destination. But at least they’re able to get back to the hotel safely. How much of that actually happened?

00:47:54:09 – 00:48:22:29
Jens Heycke
So that actually did happen. There was a there was a convoy that went out and they were attacked. People in that convoy were beaten, including including small children. It was really a terrible seat. This, again, was you know, it was a situation where were a couple of the UN people just they showed themselves to be real heroes. In one case, I’m actually looking for this guy’s name because I don’t remember it off the top of my head.

00:48:23:02 – 00:48:48:01
Jens Heycke
It was another Senegalese guy. He basically said, If you’re going to kill any of these people, you’re going to have to kill me first. So there was some really heroic behavior by by the U.N. folks on the ground there. You know, what really stopped it was that there were negotiations going on between the RPF and and the Rwandan military at that.

00:48:48:07 – 00:49:15:03
Jens Heycke
At that point, the SLA are and there was actually a threat by the RPF that if, you know, if you kill the people in that in that caravan or, you know, we’re going to take these negotiators that you’ve sent us as hostages, maybe kill them, too. So there was a lot more going on behind the scenes. And there was also pressure from the U.N. to let them go.

00:49:15:06 – 00:49:44:25
Jens Heycke
So now going to the point of Gregoire releasing the list. This was a he said they said situation that’s recessive, but Gino’s account, according to Stefon Stach, a Polish, I believe it was a captain with the U.N. He that it was recessive. Again, who released that list and not not anybody else in the hotel. So a very different portrayal.

00:49:44:25 – 00:49:49:18
Jens Heycke
And again, it’s you know, it’s kind of a he said he said they said situation.

00:49:49:20 – 00:50:11:11
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean the impression I got we talked earlier about recessive beginner kind of getting gaining favor in that aspect and that was kind of the impression I got was now towards the end of the movie he’s starting to call some of those favors in and starting to, you know, take advantage of some of that. But it sounds like, um, not necessarily the case.

00:50:11:13 – 00:50:31:25
Jens Heycke
Yeah, you know, I don’t have any doubt that he did call in favors at certain points. I mean, he certainly did to save his own family and also to save Odette and her family that were personal friends of his. There’s no no question that, you know, he used he used some of that influence in those cases.

00:50:31:27 – 00:50:49:11
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I think there is a brief mention of that in the movie where he focuses more on his own family. So, I mean, that’s what mattered the most to him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I as the movie does come to an end, we see another UN caravan. Paul knows they can’t stay at the hotel.

00:50:49:11 – 00:51:16:15
Dan LeFebvre
So this time it’s everybody that’s leaving and they drive by. Countless people fleeing the violence and then they see the Interahamwe in the road ahead. Conor Oliver tells the driver not to stop and then soldiers show up on the side of the road with machine guns and open fire on the Interahamwe on the road, since most of them have machetes, there’s not much return fire and instead we see the Interahamwe running away.

00:51:16:17 – 00:51:25:22
Dan LeFebvre
Paul explains that they made it past the front lines of the Tutsi rebel force that’s pushing them back. Is that really how they finally made it to safety?

00:51:25:24 – 00:52:10:13
Jens Heycke
Yeah, more or less is. In fact there were there as caravan of multiple vehicles because, you know, they actually couldn’t even fit them all in one trip. It was essentially a hostage exchange. What they arrange was that the RPF was also releasing some people at the same time. And interestingly enough, most of the vehicles in the caravan did go to the RPF territory, but some of them actually by choice, some of the individuals in the hotel chose to go to get trauma, which was was still being controlled at the time by the Hutu led government, although most of them went to the RPF territory and more than safe.

00:52:10:15 – 00:52:20:08
Dan LeFebvre
That makes more sense based on what you’re saying before where they were. It wasn’t how I remember the guy’s name, but you know, his his brother being in the hotel.

00:52:20:11 – 00:52:30:25
Jens Heycke
Yeah. Robert, could you go, for example? Yeah. I believe his brother did go to. To not to the RPF control territory. He went the other way.

00:52:30:27 – 00:52:51:23
Dan LeFebvre
At the very end of the movie, there’s some text that explains what happened to everyone. It says Paul sheltered 1268 Tutsi and Hutu refugees at the hotel. Touching on his brother and wife were never found, so they adopted their two children. General Busi Mungo was captured and put on trial for war crimes and the Interahamwe leader mentioned him briefly earlier.

00:52:51:26 – 00:53:01:09
Dan LeFebvre
George Rid of Gunda, was sentenced to life in prison at the same trial. How accurate is the movie’s explanation of the way the story ended?

00:53:01:12 – 00:53:33:17
Jens Heycke
So it is correct that those those various people did, you know, were captured and and they went to the International War Crimes Tribunal and were sentenced. Several of them have, you know, since died in prison. Several are still there. I think from all that I’ve read and people that I’ve talked to the bit about Paul single handedly saving 1200 people is, you know, stretching the truth a bit.

00:53:33:19 – 00:53:34:26
Dan LeFebvre
But yeah, yeah.

00:53:34:28 – 00:54:05:04
Jens Heycke
And again, you know, we have to look at this all in the context of of there are a lot of people contradicting what resuscitative gains says. Many of them may or may not feel pressure from the Rwandan government, but we have the neutral testimonial of UN people that also contradicts what we’re up against. That it was really the U.N. that helped save those people more than the results of the rape.

00:54:05:09 – 00:54:26:20
Dan LeFebvre
Speaking of recess, the beginning is it’s obviously is not in the movie at all. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention in 2021, the real Paul Rusesabagina was given a 25 year prison sentence for some terrorism related charges. I’m sure that can be an entire episode by itself. But can you give an overview of that situation, kind of what what happened to him?

00:54:26:22 – 00:54:53:03
Jens Heycke
Yeah, you know, I’m certainly no expert on that. There have been terrorist attacks against Rwanda the years, you know, including just my book talks about one that happened just a few years after the genocide where people came in from Zaire, former Interahamwe people and killed. They basically killed all virtually all the girls in the school, you know, young girls.

00:54:53:05 – 00:55:22:04
Jens Heycke
You know, they shot them. And there’s been a steady stream of those over the years to the point that when I was last in Kigali, every building you go into there, even shopping malls have metal detectors when you walk in to detect hand grenades or whatever. There were two prominent attacks, 2018 and 2019, which is what really motivated the Rwandan government to go after Paul Kagame.

00:55:22:06 – 00:55:50:08
Jens Heycke
I’m sorry, not Paul. Paul Rusesabagina, because he was associated with the group that carried out these attacks. And, you know, he says, I was only associated with a political wing, not not the violent wing. Yeah, you can look it up. There’s there’s a YouTube video which that group tried to take down, or he endorsed the military wing and said, you know, it’s time to go beyond just words.

00:55:50:11 – 00:56:18:10
Jens Heycke
We have to act. So that’s that’s really what they were going after him for. Now, on the flip side, a number of of human rights organizations have has criticized, first of all, the way he was basically abducted. He was more or less kidnaped to be brought to trial. So that was a problem. And there have been criticisms also of the way the trial was conducted.

00:56:18:12 – 00:56:22:27
Jens Heycke
So, you know, that’s where we are with that. It’s a complicated situation.

00:56:22:29 – 00:56:47:23
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, sounds complicated a time. At the end of the movie, when it talks about, you know, the genocide officially ending, it says it says that the Tutsi rebels drove the Hutu army and the militia across the border into Congo. And the impression I got from that was, I mean, it’s a movie and it kind of wraps everything up, but it sounds like everything is not all, you know, a happy ending necessarily.

00:56:47:23 – 00:56:52:04
Dan LeFebvre
It sounds like there’s definitely still some some conflicts going on.

00:56:52:06 – 00:57:22:15
Jens Heycke
You know, in fact, what happened after the RPF came into Kigali and took over a million Hutus fled over the border into into Zaire at the time, what’s now a democratic republic of the Congo and became a massive humanitarian crisis because you had a million people flood into the area around Goma and amazingly enough, the rest of the world had ignored the genocide up until that point.

00:57:22:22 – 00:57:47:16
Jens Heycke
But this made it on, you know, on CNN. And all of a sudden, the U.N. and the United States were flooding in with all kinds of aid, basically to a lot of people who were genocidaires who were involved in the genocide, which is really incredible. So to this day, there’s there’s an Interahamwe and former Rwandan military president in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

00:57:47:16 – 00:57:56:06
Jens Heycke
And and they do you know, over the years, they’ve staged all kinds of little incursions over into Rwanda. So that’s that’s an ongoing problem.

00:57:56:13 – 00:58:06:10
Dan LeFebvre
I’m just guessing the the aid from U.N. and things end up being a lot more expensive than if they had just stepped in to save lives, to begin with.

00:58:06:17 – 00:58:43:01
Jens Heycke
Oh, yeah. And you know, the real tragedy of the situation where all these Hutus had fled into Zaire is that the aid that was going to them was getting commandeered by former Interahamwe people who were acting kind of like Mafia bosses and really controlling the situation. So it’s really tragic. It made things worse in a way, and if only they had given Romeo Dallaire, you know, the troops that he needed to stop the genocide early on if they had acted earlier.

00:58:43:04 – 00:58:52:07
Jens Heycke
You know, so many lives could have been saved and so much trouble could have been averted. It’s, you know, one of the great tragedies of the 20th century.

00:58:52:09 – 00:59:06:28
Dan LeFebvre
Since the story in the movie, as we’ve learned throughout, is very heavily slanted towards Paul Rusesabagina’s account. Who are some of the real people that didn’t get mentioned in the movie?

00:59:07:00 – 00:59:47:07
Jens Heycke
So I mentioned already Carl Wilkens is again one of the few Americans who remained in Rwanda the genocide, who, you know, pretty much single handedly saved an orphanage of 500 kids. And he eventually actually went to the acting prime minister at the time, commander, and asked him to give protection to those orphans, which he did. So so Carl did an amazing job, salute guard from the Red Cross went drove in and out of danger constantly with his life under threat and saved, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of people.

00:59:47:10 – 01:00:19:08
Jens Heycke
Captain Amaya Diana from Senegal is a UN guy. He brought hundreds of people not only to the Hotel Rwanda, but or to the Colleen Hotel, but also to other unsafe sites. And he was killed by a mortar shell. I believe, at one of the checkpoints. So he was, you know, an amazing hero. Romeo Dallaire, who I also mentioned previously, who’s head of the U.N. contingent there, you know, risked his life, reputedly save many, many people.

01:00:19:10 – 01:00:46:26
Jens Heycke
Another figure was Bernard Kouchner, who was one of the founders of medicine, also on Frontier Doctors Without Borders. And he went on his own without any authorization by the French government and basically made business Congo, assure the safety of the people in the hotel. So that wasn’t Paul Rusesabagina who did that. This is Bernard Kouchner, who who was really the hero in that instance.

01:00:46:28 – 01:01:18:25
Jens Heycke
And the last person that kind of comes to mind is is an Italian nun who served at the Niemöller Church. And she was unfortunately killed actually before the genocide. That was Locatelli. And then, you know, in addition to that, there were there were many, many Hutus on on the ground who helped save their neighbors. It is the case that one out of four adult male Hutus participated in the genocide, which is a staggering number.

01:01:18:27 – 01:01:35:06
Jens Heycke
On the other hand, three out of four didn’t participate and in some of those people save their neighbors, you know, they saved strangers. So, you know, all of those people, I think, deserve some recognition for their incredible heroism.

01:01:35:09 – 01:01:41:25
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, it sounds like this movie will be a great one for a remake. And yes, redo it a little bit better.

01:01:41:28 – 01:01:55:20
Jens Heycke
I would love to see some stories done about some of those people because, you know, it’s it’s it’s just so striking. How how many of those people just what they did to risk their lives to save others.

01:01:55:23 – 01:02:13:07
Dan LeFebvre
Thank you so much for coming on to compare history with Hotel Rwanda. Obviously, the movie is from Paul’s experience, or as he says, his experience was throughout the genocide. But before I let you go, I wanted to transition to something you talk about in your book called Out of the Melting Pot into the. I’d highly recommend it to anyone listening.

01:02:13:08 – 01:02:38:28
Dan LeFebvre
There’s a link in the show notes to get your own copy. And this is a quote from the book that really stood out to me. Quote, The high speed, But low tech slaughter required hands on participation by many thousands of individuals, often killing people they knew neighbors, soccer teammates and former drinking buddies. End quote. It’s an eye opening sentence and it really showcases how hatred can make people turn on their own friends.

01:02:38:28 – 01:02:58:18
Dan LeFebvre
It’s not like it’s complete strangers. And it made me think of part one movie where Paul mentioned something about how he was currying favor, made him think that he’d have friends to call on when he needed help. But at least according to the movie, he didn’t really help. So perhaps this is the most difficult question of all. I think it’s important to learn from our past.

01:02:58:20 – 01:03:04:18
Dan LeFebvre
What’s the key thing that you think the average person should learn from this part of history?

01:03:04:21 – 01:03:36:26
Jens Heycke
I think, you know, racism is is the gift that keeps giving. And I mean, gift in the worst way. Kind of like the German sense of the word. It’s poison. And unfortunately, one generation of racism tends to lead to to another. So, you know, we and I’m using the term racism loosely in this case, because there wasn’t really a racial distinction per se, but it had all the marks of racism of of the Tutsis or the in the Belgians against the Hutus.

01:03:36:28 – 01:04:14:26
Jens Heycke
And and and then it got flipped on its head from the Hutus against the Tutsis. And, you know, I think if there’s one lesson here that really stands out in my book talks about this in other situations as well, and that’s that the solution to racism is not more racism. And that’s that’s the road that Rwanda went down, that when they got independence, instead of saying, okay, let’s move forward as one country, they instead said, now is it’s time for payback against the against the Tutsis.

01:04:14:29 – 01:04:35:16
Jens Heycke
And we’ve seen that situation in a lot of other countries, places like former Yugoslavia and in Sri Lanka. Where were they? You know, instead of saying we’re going to be a united country going forward, they said it’s time for payback. So that’s that’s always a dangerous road to go down.

01:04:35:19 – 01:04:40:28
Dan LeFebvre
I’ll make sure to include a link to your book in the show notes for this episode. Thank you again so much for your time.

01:04:41:01 – 01:04:52:03
Jens Heycke
Thank you.