 So what we're going to do this afternoon is Mr. Recessa Beguina is going to speak for about 40 minutes and then we're going to take questions from the floor. The way we're going to do that is you should have cards out there that are available. There will be four folks roaming around, look for somebody that looks vaguely lost as they walk up and down the aisles and you can pass your card to them. The cards will then come down to us and one of our graduate students will post the questions for us. We also have, if you are so inclined, personally I'm not, but I suspect many of the younger set are, if you are a member of the Twitterverse you can tweet, is that correct? Tweet your questions. I don't believe you can Facebook them. So with no further ado, Paul Recessa Beguina is the winner of the 2005 Wallenberg Medal. This award is annually awarded, passed out to someone who has served as a defender of the cause of liberty and human rights, someone who embodies the idea that one person can actually make a difference in the struggle for a better world. In the face of a genocide and a civil war that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, one man made a promise to protect his family and in the course of doing his job found the courage to save over 1,200 lives. Paul Recessa Beguina used his influence and connections while doing his job as the manager of the Hotel Mille Collines in Kigali, Rwanda to shelter over 1,200 Rwandans from being murdered by the Interahamwe militia. So who is this extraordinary man? Paul Recessa Beguina is the former general manager of a hotel. He grew up on a farm in the town of Marama about 50 miles south of the capital city, Kigali. He was educated at the faculty of theology and Cameroon and studied hotel management in Nairobi, Kenya. In November of 1992, he was promoted to be the general manager of the nearby Hotel Diplomat, just down the road from the Mille Colline. During the Civil War and genocide in the spring of 1994, Paul confronted killers with a combination of diplomacy, flattery and deception. He managed to shelter more than 1,200 Tutsi and Hutus both in his hotel while homicidal mobs raged outside with machetes during the genocide. The movie Hotel Rwanda tells the story of his time during the genocide. The book, An Ordinary Man, is his autobiography, which tells the story of a most extraordinary human being. Mr. Recessa Beguina, please join us. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. This afternoon, I have an opportunity to be back in this excellent auditorium where I spoke about nine years ago. This was October 11, 2005. That day, I was getting an award which was called the Wallenberg Award. Ladies and gentlemen, today, I'm once again here now for the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, and almost the 24th year of the beginning of the Rwandan tragedy that actually started on October 1, 1990, with a war that invaded Rwanda from a neighboring country. This is from Uganda. Today, I'm going to summarize, to talk to you, to tell you, first of all, who we are, because you tend not to know who we are. And sometimes when I talk to Americans and tell them that I come from Brussels, some of them but not you, they always tell me, oh, where is Brussels? Is it in Paris or London? No, and I know you cannot tell me this. So who are we Rwandans? Rwandans are divided into three ethnic groups, and Rwanda and Burundi are normally between countries who speak, who share same language, same culture, same of everything, mixed throughout the two countries. Do you also have some Rwandan people in western Tanzania, western Uganda, in eastern Congo? And all these people share the same things. You might tell me that these people, then if they share everything, why do they kill themselves? There is one reason so far. They kill themselves because of power, political power. It is always politicians who divide the population for themselves to conquer. Today, I will not only talk about one in politicians, because also colonization had a very important impact in what happened in Rwanda throughout our history. Rwanda until 1918, after World War I, was a German colony, like Burundi the same. Then after World War I, Rwanda and Burundi were kind of annexed to the giant Congo, and then they became the Belgian Congo and Rwanda and Burundi. So by 1930, that is the way the Belgians started giving us our first ideas within government. That kind of divide prevailed. It was there, but was widened once again. Because they went as far as saying that Hutus are short, with a wide nose, with a very round head, Tutsis were intelligent, Tutsis were more closer to whites, Tutsis were created to be leaders, whereas Hutus were not created as intelligent as the Tutsis. A Tutsi, actually Hutu, means a follower or someone who serves someone else. This is the meaning of the word itself. In Kenyarwanda, when we say um Hutu Wange, it means my kind of slave working for me. So this went on until 1959, and by 1959, the Hutus, the majority, who are about 85% of the population, through the revolution, 1959 Hutu Revolution, they took power. Unfortunately, by Hutus taking power, Tutsis went to exile. That was a very bad game. That was a very bad game because all these people who had gone to exile, leaving in refugee camps, without food, without shelter, without anything, they are the ones who later on came back fighting on October 1st, 1990. And unfortunately, those people who had suffered, those people who had been living in camps, without schools for their future generations, for their children, when they came in fighting for their rights, we also supported them, helped them, because we could not accept that to happen. But unfortunately, they disappointed us already from the beginning. Because from the beginning, in Biumba, the province they took, they just came in for the first time on October 1st. They started killing Hutus civilians on their way. So the result of this was that many Hutus, all the Hutus actually, were fleeing, started fleeing other zones occupied by the Tutsis. Then by 1993, early 1994, we had more than a million Rwandans living in refugee camps displaced within their own country, coming to Begintown in Kigali and going to sleep in the open air in camps once again for four years without schools for their children, without food, without anything. That was the first Hutu exodus, whereas the Tutsi exodus had started 30 years before. So this created an anger, actually separated Hutus, the Hutu society and the Tutsi society much more than they were separated. And to make things worse, in June 1993, a Hutu president was elected in Burundi, President of the United States, and four months later, October 1993, this Hutu president was assassinated by a Tutsi regime, a Tutsi army which was there because the army in Burundi was exclusively a Tutsi army whereas in Nwanda, it was a Hutu army, it was the opposite. So this president was killed. When President Ndadiye was killed, immediately you could see very heavy tensions between those two ethnic groups, Hutus and Tutsis, in both countries. It was so clear that something was going to happen. Sometimes when you talk about something like a genocide, people tend to think that it is something that came at a given time and disappeared at a given time, given hour. This is not what happens. They are always some signs, some things that are happening. That time you could see many people being killed, butchered by the rebels, butchered by the militias, butchered by almost all the fighting factions. We could see it. We even happened to flee our houses, went to live in hotels. Many other guys went to stay in neighboring cities such as Gitarama, Guamagana and so on and so forth. So the situation was so nervous, so tense. But on August 4, 1993, a peace agreement was signed between Hutus and Tutsis, a Hutu government and the Tutsi rebels in Tanzania, Russia. So when this peace agreement was signed, immediately we saw that the United Nations said that since these people have agreed to peace, since these people have agreed to sharing power for the first time, why can't we go as the UN observers? They sent us 2,500 soldiers under the rule of our Canadian general, General Dallair, who in Hotel Rwanda was played by Nick Nolte as the Colonel. But he was played that way because he did not want to give his rights and he wanted actually to play his own, to make one day his own movie about what happened in Rwanda. So now when we saw the international community concerned, getting involved, sending us soldiers, we immediately, all of us, left the places where we had gone to hide. We left Gitarama, came back to town, we left the hotels and went to stay in our houses. Without knowing what was going to happen in the night of April 6, 1994. I will never forget, the month of March 1994, I had been to Europe with my wife and my younger son. Who is the age of many of you here in the audience? Because Tresor today is a junior in Chapman University, Orange County, California. So he's the age of many of you guys. So we had traveled. We were in Europe. I had managed our meetings and of course, we decided to take a few weeks off because I had been working so hard. And when we came back, we did not go to the hotel. We decided to go to our house, but this was maybe a mission. The mission was to save the lives of 27, 26 neighbors who, when the president was killed, his plane crashed, all of those neighbors decided to come to my house. And when I had an opportunity to take them, I had no choice than taking all of those neighbors as well with me as my wide family, my extended family. In my family, we used to be, at that time, we were six people. We had four children and then plus the two nieces, you see, those ones came in a few months later when we got them, we found them in a refugee camp. Rather, I was celebrating with their parents on April 6, 1994. And now we never forget their images. When they escorted me, when they killed the president, Tassiana was not with us. We were with Thomas and his wife, the nieces, mother and father. So we were celebrating two things. The wife had just graduated from the university and I had helped the family to get a good job in a Dutch company selling cars. So we were celebrating those two events, the degree and also the good job. So that day, that night. Then we drove home. When we were standing, first of all, at the diplomat hotel, which is today's Kigali Serena Hotel, I was standing with them, telling them that, listen, you guys, go home. I will see you tomorrow. But tomorrow never came for them because they were killed, they were never found today. But we are lucky. We found there are two daughters who are lovely daughters. The elder one is also a junior at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and her sister is at Northwestern University, not very far from you. This is Chicago. So ladies and gentlemen, let us come back to me and my house. Then when we had an opportunity to be evacuated from that house to the hotel, I took those people I knew, neighbors, and completely unknown people. I took them to the hotel, and on my way, you saw what happened when I was given guns to kill all those cockroaches of mine, dehumanizing people before killing them. That time, the enemy dehumanizing was calling people, not cockroaches. This was a way of dehumanizing them before they are killed. So I looked in the eyes of that guy who had given me a gun, a young captain, and I told him that my friend, myself, after five minutes, just of fear, almost sweating, I told him that my friend, myself, I do not know how to use guns, but even if I knew, I do not see any good reason why I should kill these old men. There was an old man who was about 65 years or 70. I pointed out that man, and then I told them, I don't see any good reason why we should kill this man. He is not involved in what is going on. He's not the enemy we were supposed to fight. And there was a young lady holding her baby, and I pointed out that baby as well, and told them that my friend's this baby does not know what is going on in these cars. So but sometimes we have to understand them, pretend to understand them when it comes to that. Then I told them that my friend, you I do not understand you. You guys are hungry, you guys are thirsty, you guys are tired, you guys are stressed by the war, but we can find other solutions. Let me tell you one thing. One lesson that I learned that day, I learned I had come in a face to face with evil. Those guys were not joking, handing me over a gun. They knew what they were doing, and they could have killed us. All along the street, there were many dead bodies. It was on the hotel compound, not on the hotel compound, as Hotel Rwanda portrays. It was on the street of Kigali, a mile away from my house, approximately. So they were not joking because there were so many other dead bodies. They are heads cut off, just beheaded, and some of them bellies opened. I knew they were not going, going to, they were not joking. So but I happened to open my mouth and deal with those guys. Let me tell you one lesson I learned. I learned, I did it with evil, and I learned that words can be the best, and the worst weapons in a human being's arsenal. With words, we can save lives. That day, I discussed with these guys for about two hours, and after two long hours, we came up with a compromise, and the compromise was them to drive us to the hotel and me give them money what I had promised. This told me that negotiating, dealing is possible, even with evil. And this lesson was going to help me throughout the whole period of time. And it helped me because throughout that whole period of time, I was almost dealing, negotiating, and in the other way, other people were using words through the media. Now in a smear campaign, just urging people to kill their neighbors, telling people that do your job, killing had become a job in 1994 during the Rwandan genocide. Killing was a job among many others, telling them to listen, feel the griefs. They are not yet full. So we saw all of this happening, and now imagine, you find yourself in a hotel. You do not have running water. You do not have food to feed these people. There is no electricity. How do you manage? And you have a thousand and more people in your hotel under your responsibility. This is what we went through for a period of three months. From April 6th, when the genocide broke out, by the killing of the president, of President Habyarimana, until July 4th, when the Rwandan rebels, the Tutsi rebels, actually took over the whole country. So that was the end of that period called the genocide. Because before we talk about 20 years, we have also, we have got to talk about the four years of the civil war. And this is what I've talked about. And then after, during the genocide, according to reports, approximately 10,000 people were being put on every day in a small country like Rwanda. Think about an average of 10 people, 10,000 people out of 7.3 million people we were. Think about so many people dying every day. How many people being killed, dropped to death each and every minute, each and every week, each and every month. In that time, I knew because I was protecting the most wanted people, I knew that these people would kill me. And I was also threatened. They came to me and told me that we know. We know that before we kill all of these people, you have protecting them. Before we kill them, we do have to kill you. So but what kept me going, what kept me going and knowing that I was going to be killed was the fact that being killed, dying one day, I believe that I will die. And no one doubts about that. No one of us will live forever. But when shall we die, when the day only will come? This is my belief. And then I kept doing every small thing I could do. That was my message, my way of doing things. And then came July 4th when the rebels took over the whole country. That day, we thought that we had seen the end of troubles, the end of massacres. But unfortunately, this was not the end. That is the very time. When we saw many people being tied from the back, forbidden. When we saw people thrown into containers, dying there. Their bodies burnt in national parks and national reserves. That is when we started seeing people being imprisoned in their neighbor's houses. Even today, they are houses in which people are just secretly imprisoned. This is what is going on in Rwanda. So that we saw this happening. And then we saw many people being now put into prison without justice. Between 1994 and 2000, justice was absent. And I remember in 1994, the United Nations sponsored a special mission to train 1500 judges. Then those judges, what did they do? Nobody knows because we never saw them in any court. But people were rotting in prisons. That is when we saw now a new army, the former rebels who had taken power. That is when we saw them destroying a refugee camp that contained about 8,500,000 people. I mean 8,500 people. This camp was destroyed by machine guns and helicopter bombardments. This was in the nights of April 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th of 1995, a year before the genocide. Had we learned any lessons from what we had been going through, unfortunately, history had kept repeating itself that we had never, as Rwandans, learned any lessons. That is when we started seeing Hutu intellectuals disappearing. Others being assassinated when trying to get into their compound. In the evening around 7, it is always dark in Rwanda because we are very close to the equator. So as early as that, seeing people being killed. So that is when many human rights advocates were killed. We, this is when in 1996, in October, that is when the former victims now engaged in a war in the Congo, in a neighboring country, and started buttering, first of all, refugees. Who are the refugees who are being killed? They pretended to be following the militias, the former militias. But the former militias were not going to wait for them. They had ran away. The people they were trying to kill were old people, were babies, kids, women, sick people. Those are the ones they were killing. And for a period of about two years and three years, they killed more than 300,000 Rwandan refugees. Hutu refugees. According to the Indian Mapping Report, maybe you have heard of this Mapping Report. If this was examined by a competent institution, it would be also called a genocide, among many other genocide. The war we thought was a war now to hunt after militias. The former militias became a war, a bloody war for minerals in the Congo. For minerals in the Congo, more than 7 million Congolese since 1996 to date have been killed by proxy militias. Hundreds of thousands of women have been raped in the Congo, all over or around in North and Southern Kivu provinces. Only two provinces. And two, seven million have been killed. Hundreds of thousands of women have been raped. Many young girls have been raped on our watch. And we never said any single word to denounce that. And who is doing that? Militias, the proxy armies armed by two governments. By the Rwandan government, by the Ugandan government. First of all, at the beginning, it used to be called immediately after killing President Kabila, it was called RCD Goma. And then when the world discovered who was behind RCD Goma, Rwanda and Uganda, now they changed the tactics, the name. They became CNDP. And in 2008, when the international community discovered that it was a war of occupation, a war about blood minerals, they now kind of changed the name. This is when the UN report about the stolen minerals of the Congo, this report came on December 10th, 2008, and immediately they changed the name. They tried to trick the Congolese government. And the Congolese government integrated the then rebels. And a few years later, this in 2012, they just tracked, left the Congolese army and formed now with the aid of Rwanda, with the aid of Uganda once again. They created what is today called M23, because it was created on March 23rd, 2012, and it was called under that day to when it was created. Just recently, the international community, the United States, the United Nations, have now mandated a strong, special mission to fight and remove all of those proxy militias. These soldiers of about 3,000 soldiers are from Tanzania, from South Africa, and from Malawi. So far, the Rwandan government and the Ugandan government, which had been entertained, those militias, those armies, they are now taking back their kids. It is a shame to see a nation just officially getting into schools, primary secondary schools, recruiting young kids, child soldiers, and bringing them into military camps in Rwanda, in Uganda, training them, sending them to the Congo to fight for M23 on our watch. This is what has been going on for the last 20 years since the genocide started on April 6, 1994. And this is the report of what has been going on since October 1, 1990, when the war broke out, and this and the mass massacres are noted over. We have been trying, trying to stop and to talk about all of these which has been going on, to be the voice for the voiceless, to be, to raise awareness, to tell the world. You will ask me that what has the world done? The world for the last two years they understood, and they showed us that they do understand. Because in 2012, July, we saw the United States for the first time. Now, getting releasing, a kind of press release. And then, telling, stopping, they are direct aid to the Rwandan army. That was a strong message, immediately. But we didn't, so it did not take many days. In a few hours, the Netherlands immediately followed the United States, and stopped their foreign aid to Rwanda. And this was not all. We saw also countries like Germany stopping their foreign aid. The United Kingdom, Sweden, which had even started a long time before, because we had been raising awareness many times in Sweden for the last six years and more. So we saw the international community now has started to understand what has been going on. The 20 and 24 years have been a problem, not only for Rwanda, but also for the whole region of the Great Lakes region of Africa. Today, the world is understanding. We should never give up. We should never stop believing that we can make it. We can always make it. The most important thing for us is to join us, to join the Hotel Rwanda Ruse Sabagina Foundation, because we are the ones who started raising awareness, talking about all of this. And then we are the ones who started to inform the international community. And our wish is to tell Rwandans, the Rwandan government, Rwandans abroad, you people today in my audience, then join us and help us to solve our conflicts with the words. Words are the best weapons, as I said, because I used them and to work. Whereas for the last almost 55 years, we have been trying to solve our conflicts with the guns. And with the guns, I will tell you that we have failed, because if you see the region, it is a simmering volcano. Do you want to join us? You just go into the Hotel Rwanda Ruse Sabagina Foundation.org. That is our website. And see what we are doing and try to help us. This is a summary of what has been going on in Rwanda and also in the region. Let me give you an opportunity before we close to ask me any questions you feel like asking me. You ask me questions without taboo. I saw people moving around, collecting questions. Please do read them to me so that I can answer them. Thank you. Thank you. Is that better? Yeah, I think so. Okay, great. Hello, and thank you again for coming and visiting Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan. We're really honored to have you. It's my pleasure. My name is Seema Singh. I am a first year master's student at the Ford School, and I'll be asking questions from the audience as well as Twitter. And the first question from the audience, how did the Hutu extremists know who was Tutsi and who was Hutu, as many Tutsi and Hutu intermarried? That is a very good question. Because in 1994, we did not have a million Tutsis in Rwanda according to statistics. And yet, according to the United Nations, 800,000 people were killed. And according to the Rwandan government, 1,174,000 people were killed. Meaning to say that there is no one who can tell that this one is a Hutu or that one is a Tutsi. Most many Hutus, Rwandans, were killed not only because of many other reasons. Maybe it's because of stories between neighbors, because of misunderstanding here and there, because they just saw people and killed them because of where they came from. So people were not killed necessarily because they were Tutsis. This is then the whole problem. If you go to Central and Southern Rwanda, maybe people have been mixing for generations and generations. Our parents were getting married around 1900s, 1800s even. So intermarrying, they were intermarrying. So many Hutus were killed. And according to statistics, maybe many Hutus were killed more than Tutsis. As Seema said, thank you for being here today. My name is Katie Gadard. I'm a second year student at the Ford School of Public Policy. And someone in our audience has asked you that you are an inspiration to so many. So who inspires you? That is not a disturbing question, but almost. Well, sometimes you know, some other times you don't. But the most important thing is that at the age of 13, I had read the whole Bible. I come from a Seventh Day Adventist Church kind of environment. Where we have the headquarters in Rwanda, in the whole country. So I attended a Seventh Day Adventist School Church when I was a kid, about six, seven years old, until when I was 20 years old. So for more than 10 years. So that is an influence. Secondly, I had also some role models. In 1967, I was reading a lot about Mandela, about Martin Luther King. During my spare time, I was reading about those people, those important people, Mahatma Gandhi. But also, among many others, I believe that my father had a very important influence in my life. Because I used to love the way my father would solve conflicts. He, every year, would even invite us, all his children and the grandchildren. Wherever we were in the country, for the New Year's Eve, we were supposed to go home. And our father was always organizing a kind of feast. He would always slaughter a bull for his children and grandchildren. And he had always prepared a lot of good banana beers. And each and every year, he would just give us a summary of how we performed the previous year. And every year, he would give us a lesson, a new lesson, the year's lesson. One of the lessons we never forget was this one. My dad told us, his children, the lesson you guys. I know throughout your whole lives, you are going to face problems. This is life. If you happen then to be called up and fix them, this is the best way to behave. Suppose you see two brothers are fighting. And someone or some people calls you to go and separate those brothers. And try to unite them again. He told us that, listen, if you are to be honest, just stand in the middle of the two brothers. Do not never make a mistake of looking to your left-hand side. Because that eye on your left-hand side might influence your decision. Do not incorrupt you. Do not make a mistake of looking to your right either. Because the other eye also might influence your decision. So you stand in the middle. Look up and just see the truth. That was one of the lessons. And I'm sharing it with you today. So he was also my best role models. I remember him when he was around the age of 70s, 80s. That is when I was growing up. My dad used to be invited for the Garchacha Courts. The Garchacha Courts were the traditional courts in Wanda, which for those who followed Wanda, since 2000, they are the ones which have been trying and convicting those ones who committed the one in genocide. So he was one of the elders who would also attend those courts as a judge. And then he was always the last one to speak. And in his message, before he spoke, we could see the guys who were not really very right. We could see them almost shaking because they expected a tough decision from his mouth. So I used to admire also my father. This is another question from the audience. Popular belief about the genocide suggests that hate radio increased violence. From your experience, do you believe this to be true? Why and how and to what extent? Of course, the media, are you done? Are you done with the question? Yes. Oh, thank you. Thank you. So this is what I was saying previously about words. And I talked about this. RTLM was a radio. At the beginning in 1993, so when it started, it was kind of spreading excellent Congolese music to attract the people and trap them later on. So this radio, at a given time, raises the voice and starting denouncing people. Saying, for instance, that so-and-so is hiding in his neighbors in so-and-so's roof. Go, find them, find him, find that cockroach, kill him or her. So if, with the radio, not have been there, that one in genocide might have taken place, this is a fact. But would it have been spread that much? I think the media played one of the most important roles to spread hatred within the people between killers and victims. Unfortunately, history repeats itself. That time we had RTLM, which was a kind of hate radio. But today we do have newspapers. If you read the Kigali New Times, it is more or less, if not worse, than RTLM. If you read papers like Igihay.com, it is the New Times in Kinyarwanda. They spread exactly the same messages we were having. Here, let me take an opportunity and tell you that in Rwanda, the real media do not exist. All the media that you see that exist are the media government controlled politically motivated, and they talk for politicians. This is why in Rwanda, there is no freedom of media, no freedom of speech, no political space, no human rights abuse is the rule of the jungle. This is a question that came in from Twitter. Do you have any thoughts of returning to Rwanda to seek political office? Thank you. Well, I would tell that person, why not? Why not? Each and every citizen in a nation had the right and the obligation actually to be important to her or his, their countries. So why not me? But today, right now, as I'm here, I prefer to be a humanitarian because this is the only way to send my strong message right now. This is the best way to do it today. Another question from the audience. Do you think the Hutus and Tutsis can reconcile their differences despite this bloody past? I believe totally that Hutus and Tutsis do not hate each other as portrayed in many media and also by, especially the government, by politicians. Let me call it politicians. Because as we are speaking now, next Saturday, for sure, there will be at least a wedding between Hutu and Tutsi in a way or another. 20 years after the genocide, Hutus and Tutsis are still intermarrying. That is an excellent sign that these people do not hate each other as such. We are always divided by politicians who always would like to divide, as I said previously, so that they rule easily. Otherwise, we love each other. If you see me with some Tutsis who are here in the audience, we'll see each other and we'll greet and talk. If there are some Hutus who are here, they are also going to meet and also talk. So these people don't hate each other. It is politicians who are always behind that. If you could redo one thing, what would it be? But that is rather a disturbing question. If I was to redo what I went to go through, what I went through in 1994, there is only one simple, small thing I would try to do. In 1994, I was helping my fellow neighbors, people I knew and people I never knew, trying to bring them to my hotel, to the Michelin Hotel. Many soldiers did this kind of job and only God will pay them. So if I was to redo anything once again, if I was to go back to 1994, even if it is not my wish, I would wish to have more soldiers and send them as many as I could and get more than 1,268 as I had in 1994. Thank you. This is another question from Twitter. Have you gone back to the Hotel Michelin since the genocide? Actually, this is what people do not know. Hotel Rwanda is a film, is a movie. It had to start somewhere and end somewhere. You saw the movie, with the best ending. But with the manager going to Tanzania. I did not go to Tanzania. I stayed in Rwanda. And on April, around July 6, 7, that is when we started cleaning both hotels. I was working for Sabina Airlines, Hotel Department. I was a general manager in the hotel branch. So then we were two general managers. Had two hotels, two general managers. There was a European, a Dutch from the Netherlands, and me as the only African general manager for the whole company in Europe and abroad. So one day around April 11, my colleague Beek was evacuated and he left. So I was in charge of the two hotels. I became the general manager of both hotels. And then after becoming, controlling then, both hotels. That is when you see me arriving at the Michelin Hotel. Sometimes people don't even realize that I had left that hotel two years before. I just came in back for the refugees. And I didn't live Kigali until September 6, 1996. Because I was almost assassinated, almost killed, and it just skipped narrowing. That very day, I said to myself that enough was enough. More than two years later, very bitter and very angry, I also went to exile. Had I done any crime against anyone? No. But I had no choice than fleeing to exile. After a community experiences genocide, how do you recover or move on? How do you use the painful memories to inspire action and progress and movement towards a brighter future? I think the best way, once again, if you want after such a horrible thing like a genocide, the best way, first of all, is to get everybody, to get everybody to be able to speak out about it. Because otherwise, keeping everything within ourselves is not the best therapy. Once you speak out, you share with others. So my advice is for those who might go through such a hard time that you never know, it is to talk, to speak out, talk about it. That time you share with others. It happened to me. It happened to many other people. It happened to my own children who, at a given time in life, were becoming a little bit aggressive because they were not talking about it. They were not sharing with anyone. And then we noticed this. And then started talking about it again and again and again. That became our best therapy. And I believe it will be also the best therapy for everybody. How do we move on? We have a choice. The first choice is to say, give up and say, OK, we have seen it happening. It has happened. We have been killed and we have been killing. So whatever happens, we don't care. That is possible. And many people went to that extreme, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing. However, some other people say, no. This is not the best way to solve a conflict. This is not the best way to solve this problem. Our best way to solve it is rather to sit down, talk about it. Why did it happen? Who is responsible for what? And around the table, through words, bring everybody to duty. We bring the whole truth there. We practice eco-justice. And this is the Hotel Rwanda, which is a beginner's mission, practicing eco-justice. Because the truth and eco-justice are the only ways towards a sustainable piece through dialogue and towards a sustainable piece, not only for Rwanda, my country, but also for the whole region. Because our wars have crossed the borders. They are no more only in Rwanda. They are in Uganda. They are in the Congo. They have affected the whole region. So the best way to move on. Some of us say, we don't care. Eye for eye and tooth for tooth. But is this a lasting solution? The lasting solution, in order to end such conflict, is always to sit down and talk. This is the only lasting solution. To sit down and talk and forgive. Forgiveness is always the last, the final solution for people to get when they want to get. Thank you. Another question from Twitter. What are your feelings towards current President Paul Kagame? Well, that is a... What are my feelings towards Paul Kagame? I think I thought I had answered this question. Forgiveness. Kagame is a world leader, like any other world leader, who actually had a very complicated, maybe bio, which includes what happened in Uganda, killing people, taking them to prisons. The rebellion in 1990, killing people on his way to power. Then killing people after just on power since 1994 to date in Rwanda. What has been happening in the Congo? But I believe that I, for I once again, might make all of us blind. And tooth for tooth, as said the elders, might make all of us toothless. I believe that the best final solution for each and every one is forgiveness. So I forgive him. Thank you. Thank you for your answer. And this question is from a student in the audience who's in high school. And they say, I'm a high school student. What do you think I should do now and later in my life to become a person like you? Thank you. I thank you, you, the person who asked me this question. Do you want to become a person like me? I would give you an advice. Remain that young human being you are today. That person is the best. Many times, we tend to follow the majority. The majority will always be the majority, but the majority will always, will never be always right. This is my advice to that person. I have learned throughout my experiences that the best advisors, the best advisor, is always our own conscience. Our conscience will never confuse wrong to right. So it is the only advisor who knows us and what we do and who we are. It is the only one who will never cheat us, tell us lies, or just tell us good words in order to please us. It is the only one who will stand for what he or she, the conscience, the inner belief is our best advisor. In 1994, definitely, me, among many lessons, I followed my conscience. My conscience, I made my conscience my best advisor. So my dear friend or my dear son or daughter who asked me this question, listen to yourself. Thank you. What is your hope for the future of Rwanda? My hope is that one day we will see Hutus and Tutsis, and this is my dream today. My dream is that one day we see Hutus and Tutsis sitting around the table. We'll see all of these people talking, bringing the whole truth to the table, practicing eco-justice towards a sustainable piece, not only for us, but also for our neighbors. That is a dream. And I believe that this dream will be accomplished. And it will not take that long, because there are many men and women who are willing to do that. So this is a dream. This is my wish. And this is what we are aiming at. And this is the Hotel Rwanda Rosesabagina Foundation's main objective. This is a question from Twitter. Why do you think it took so long for the major powers to get involved? I'm not surprised. It has always taken so long. This is the international community. This is the major powers. And this is also in human nature. People always tend to close ears and eyes. People tend to turn backs, pretend not to see, even they have open eyes. They always fear to get involved. This is the problem, actually. So I think that this is what takes them. This is what it takes for them to get involved. However, we can also talk about another point, which is the most important part of it. No international superpower will get involved on its own without getting the international community, the United Nations, on board. And who are the United Nations? The United Nations are made of about six or seven superpowers. Those superpowers, they always try to get involved in what is going on in all those conflicts because of their political, geopolitical, economical interests. So they are always also defending their own interests. So this is, and to get through the United Nations then, first of all, making a decision. Making a decision, I talked about this maybe twice this morning, because making a decision, it takes time. Writing a kind of resolution. Sometimes you see an event taking place in the Central African Republic. And you see, they say, OK, now we ask the United States to sit down and draft a resolution. They will sit down and draft a very strong resolution, which is against some other superpowers' interests. They will just come in with that resolution. And the others will say, no, you are offending our allies and our interests. So we are not with you. You go sit down, and we are going to help you and show you how to write a resolution. And then they sit down, dilute that resolution. And when they come up with that resolution, they don't have means. They go into countries again. After diluting that resolution, they go from countries to countries. When it comes to keeping peace, they just start begging soldiers from here and there. At the end of the whole process, after six, seven months, that is when they try to get involved, and they start again shifting. When they're transporting men and ammunitions to that destination, it takes a year before they come in. And what they have decided, for instance, to get involved in Rwanda on day one, that one in genocide took three months. So they would have actually come after a million people had been butchered. It would have been too late, even if they were to take that decision on day one of the genocide on April 6. So this is the international community. And this is why I say that as long as this international community is not reformed and becomes a new organization which is up to date, updating, then it will never be efficient. Rwanda is celebrated as an entrepreneurial success, is access to economic opportunity balanced between ethnic groups. This is the problem. In Rwanda, we have a winner and a loser. Actually, as I said, the Rwandan genocide took place during a civil war that started on October 1, 1990. Then those who started the war in 1990 are the ones who won, who won the war, who conquered. So today, they are the ones who are in the army. And in Rwanda, the army means everything. It means that you have everything, the whole power and the whole of it. And the losers actually go to exile. So these guys coming back to Rwanda in 1994, after a genocide, they have having no connections to no roots in the rural areas, decided to get settled in the capital city of Kigali. They are the military guys. They are the ones who went to the Congo, who got hold of the golds and diamonds of blood minerals. So you go to Kigali, where they live, to seize from Uganda especially, a kind of a lift. Where they live, Rwanda is a paradise on Earth. But cross the country and go in the rural areas. Try to go there. What are you going to see? What experience are you going to have? You will see people who do not even eat two meals a day, who are abdying of hunger, being barren. So this is what is going on in Rwanda and to make things worse. Those guys who invaded in 1990 are English speakers. So these English speakers, one day, it was on October 18th, 2008. One man, there was no cabinet meeting, nothing. One man went on the air through the media, televisions, radios, papers, and declared Rwanda to be an English-speaking country. And yet, until that date, all of us who went to school to Rwanda, we are French speakers. Now think about those intellectuals who went to school in French throughout their whole lives. Think about people like someone who is 50 years old, who has been, for example, who is a lawyer, who has been practicing in French. Now all over suddenly, overnight, someone comes and tells that person that from now onwards, you'll be doing your job in English. It means it is simply someone is telling you to get out of his or her way, because your place is no more there. So this is what has been happening in Rwanda. So today, the elite, the English-speaking Rwandans from Uganda, who are not even 5% of the Rwandan or the Rwandan intellectuals, are the ones who have occupied the best job market in the whole country. We thank you for your candidacy and willingness to engage our audience and people on Twitter tonight. This will be the last question. How can you still have faith in the international community when it failed you so badly in 1994? Actually, having faith is something. Having faith, I do not know whether I have faith or not. And I don't believe in having faith into an organization. But I believe in one thing. In 1994, I was very bitter. I was very angry. I didn't want to talk to many people from outside, to journalists who were kind of doing business, writing articles, selling them, writing books, selling them, selling actually, selling our tragedy. I was, would I have been willing to? What Rwanda was to come out in a year, if not less. But I was not really collaborating. So this taught me one of the most important lessons. If you want to score, do you want to score a goal? You have to go down to the pitch and play. Because otherwise, if you don't, you won't score. Me, when I was a young man, I used to play soccer. I don't know whether there are some soccer. Are there some soccer players here? Oh, many. I have many companions in the audience. So I used to score, to play soccer. And I'm left handed. I use, you know the number I used to play. I use scoring. So by remaining silent, I could not score. I was rather traumatizing myself. So from that day onwards, I decided to go down to the pitch and change things. Then by changing things, why can I change also the international community? My message today is also to change the international community. Ladies and gentlemen, to conclude, let me thank you very much for listening to me. Let me thank my friend Alan Stam, Professor Stam who invited me to be here and spread this message. Almost on the eve of the 20th commemoration of the Rwandan Genocide and the 24th commemoration of the Rwandan tragedy that started in 1990, and ask you a favor. Do me a favor. For so long, all of us, we have stood by. We have worked what has been happening for years. My favor is this. Stand up and help us to change the world. Thank you.