Dear Friends,
I need your help to speak out against increasing government repression in Rwanda, where human rights violations are growing at an alarming pace in the lead up to August elections. As a Rwandan friend of mine recently reported:
"Violence is likely to escalate, not die down, in the coming weeks as we get closer to election day...the country is exactly where it was in 1994 before the mass killings began. Today we may be on the verge of another tragedy of genocidal proportions. I really wonder if any of the people in high places of power outside Rwanda realize what's happening!"
Independent news outlets have been shut down. Critics of the government have been beaten and jailed. Human rights observers have been kicked out of the country. Yet the European Union has just decided not to send election monitors to supervise Rwanda's 2010 election. I remember what happened in 1994, when western nations looked the other way as Rwanda was experiencing a crisis. Please donate now to help the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation alert the world to human rights violations in Rwanda.
You can also help by calling the U.S. State Department and the Rwandan Embassy to urge the release of American law professor Peter Erlinder - a member of the faculty at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota. Professor Erlinder, who is in ill health, was illegitimately jailed by the repressive Rwandan government last week when he travelled to Kigali to defend an opposition presidential candidate.
Professor Erlinder was doing his job as a lawyer in a peaceful, legal way and should not have been jailed. The Rwandan government, which accepts hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from the United States government, should respect the human rights of U.S. citizens. Please call or write Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson at 202-647-2530 (fax: 202-647-0838) and Rwandan Ambassador to the United States James Kimonyo at 202-232-2882 ( fax: 202-232-4544).
Despite numerous challenges we are making a difference. Over the past two weeks, the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation team has shared its message of support for truth, reconciliation and sustainable peace with thousands of potential anti-genocide advocates.
We presented to students and their families at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, helping to honor inspirational students who had written essays on their approaches to fighting genocide. We provided testimony on the lessons of Hotel Rwanda and the Rwandan genocide to faith, community and political leaders at Illinois Governor Pat Quinn's 2010 Prayer Breakfast. Our Foundation celebrated its first five years of work at a reception organized by world-renowned peace activist and artist Matt Lamb and activist-artist Margaret Buckman.
I hope that you will stand with me, and supporters like these, during this critical time for Rwanda. Thank you again for all that you do for the cause of human rights.
Paul Rusesabagina
President
Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation
PS - Taylor Greene of Guerin College Preparatory High School in River Grove, Illinois wrote in her winning Holocaust Museum essay, "We have been riddled with the disease of war for so long that we have forgotten what peace really feels like." Help my Foundation ensure that the next generation of Rwandans finally knows peace
Phone: (312) 498-9279
Fax: (312) 464-0262
www.HRRFoundation.org
Email us at: info@hrrfoundation.org
