University of Southern Maine

News Releases

Hero of “Hotel Rwanda” to Speak at USM

April 5 , 2006

Paul Rusesabagina, the man whose story inspired the film “Hotel Rwanda,” will speak at 7:30 p.m., Monday, April 24, in USM’s Hannaford Lecture Hall, Abromson Community Education Center, Bedford St., Portland.  The event, which is free and open to the public, is designed to raise awareness about how global passivity allows atrocities of the magnitude of the Rwandan genocide to continue.  He will sign copies of his recently released autobiography, “An Ordinary Man,” which will be available for sale at the event.  Parking is available in USM’s parking garage.

Rusesabagina saved the lives of his family and over 1,200 people during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Aan estimated 800,000 members of the Tutsi ethnic group and moderate Hutus were massacred in just 100 days by extremist Hutu soldiers and civilians. His heroism earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civil award.  

The manager of a luxury hotel in the Rwandan capitol of Kigali, Rusesabagina was the son of a mixed marriage between a Hutu and a Tutsi, who found the courage to save the lives of both friends and strangers. “The shame is to see,” Rusesabagina has stated, “that Rwanda was never a lesson. We should have taken the Rwandan situation to be a kind of wake-up call to remind us what is going on all over Africa. It’s a shame to mankind that we did not.”

This event, titled “Never Again? Genocide and Indifference,” marks the official commemoration date of the Armenian genocide in 1915, in which more than a million Armenian men, women and children were murdered.  Among the sponsors of this event is the Armenian Cultural Society of Maine. The planning committee included members of the Rwandan, Burundi, Cambodian, Sudanese, Somali, Darfur, Armenian, and Democratic Republic of the Congo communities in greater Portland.  Cosponsors include the Hudson Foundation, in memory of Douglas Schair, TD Banknorth, Law Offices of Joe Bornstein, Maine Humanities Council, Maine Council of Churches and USM’s Academic Council for Post-Holocaust Christian, Jewish and Islamic Studies.

For more information, please contact Abraham Peck, director of the Council at 780-5331. 

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