The final lecture in the spring 2007 Assembly Series will feature Rwandan hero Paul Rusesabagina at 11 a.m. April 18 in Graham Chapel.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Lecture is free and open to the public and sponsored by the Association of Black Students, the Social Justice Center and Amnesty International.
Since Rusesabagina’s extraordinary story was told through the Oscar-nominated film “Hotel Rwanda” and his memoir, “An Ordinary Man” — also the title of his talk — he has been hailed as a hero and voice for those in African nations experiencing wholesale victimization.
Rusesabagina will speak on his experiences, the genocide in Darfur, his ongoing support of Rwanda and current issues involving international humanitarian aid.
The story of the spring 1994 Rwandan Genocide is horrific: For 100 days, the Hutu-led Interahamwe slaughtered the Tutsi population, resulting in the deaths of approximately 800,000 people.
Most Tutsis and moderate Hutus found nowhere to turn for survival. An exception was the Mille Collines Hotel, a luxury hotel in central Kigali where Rusesabagina was serving as temporary manager.
At the time, Rusesabagina was manager of another hotel owned by the same company, but when the manager of the Mille Collines fled the country because of the violence, Rusesabagina was sent to fill in.
Putting himself at great peril, Rusesabagina used his influence and connections to fend off almost daily attempts to kill the 1,200 people in the hotel.
His wife, Tatiana, is a Catholic Tutsi and was a target of government-sponsored attacks. Although his wife and children were beaten during an attempted escape from the hotel to a safer place, they survived, and in 1996, the family immigrated to Belgium.
In addition to receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush, Rusesabagina has been given numerous humanitarian awards, including the Immortal Chaplains Prize for Humanity, the Wallenberg Medal from the University of Michigan and the National Civil Rights Museum Freedom Award.
For more information, call 935-4620 or visit assemblyseries.wustl.edu.