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Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor

What Kagame has done to Rusesabagina, of Hotel Rwanda fame, embarrasses the US foreign policy establishment that has lionized his brutal regime for so long, writes Ann Garrison.

“Rusesabagina is a longtime critic of Kagame’s regime and its catastrophic war on the Congolese people and the Rwandan refugee population.”

Paul Rusesabagina, the real-life protagonist whose heroic story is the basis of the film “Hotel Rwanda ,” is now imprisoned and on trial in Rwanda for a long list of preposterous “terrorism” charges. Rwandan operatives kidnapped  him in Dubai at the beginning of September and forcibly extradited him to Rwanda on the orders of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who was for many years celebrated as Rwanda’s savior, the general who stopped the genocide. A long list of investigative works, most recently Judi Rever’s “In Praise of Blood, Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front,” and decades of UN reports detailing the Rwandan army’s atrocities in both Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have belied that tale, but US and other NATO nations’ support for the president has remained.

Rusesabagina is a longtime critic of Kagame’s regime and its catastrophic war on the Congolese people and the Rwandan refugee population who crossed the Rwandan/Congolese border to escape his advancing army in 1994. I have spoken to him several times for Pacifica’s KPFA Radio and the San Francisco Bay View  about Rwanda and DRC, and for Counterpunch “On Invoking Rwanda to Attack Syria .” I read his book “An Ordinary Man ,” and I’ve followed his activism on behalf of peace in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the wider African Great Lakes Region for over ten years. I trust and admire his commitments and hope to see him released soon […]

Via https://www.blackagendareport.com/who-rwandas-real-hero-paul-kagame-or-paul-rusesabagina