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“ | Rutaganda: Their money is no good to them anymore. Soon, all the Tutsis will be dead. Paul: You do not honestly believe that you can kill them all? Rutaganda: And why not? Why not? We are halfway there already. |
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~ Rutaganda to Paul Rusesabagina, in response to Paul asking if he was serious in killing all the Tutsis. |
Georges Rutaganda is the main antagonist of the 2004 historical drama film Hotel Rwanda. He is a local goods merchant who serves as a commander of the Interahamwe militia. He is a fictionalized version of the real life Hutu militant of the same name, considered to be one of the most important figures of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.
He was portrayed by Hakeem Kae-Kazim, who also played Waraabe in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Richard Gladwell in Gotham, Krogan and Drago Bludvist in Dragon: Race to the Edge and Benatu Eshu in Vixen.
Biography[]
Georges Rutaganda is a commander of the Interahamwe, a radical militia and political movement that are followers of Hutu Power, a racist ideology that asserts that members of the Hutu ethnic group are superior to members of the Tutsi ethnic group. He also runs a warehouse that provides supplies to the Hotel Milles Collines in Kigali, Rwanda's capital city, which is run by Paul Rusesabagina, a fellow Hutu whom Rutaganda considers a close friend.
At the beginning of the film, Paul is visiting Rutaganda's warehouse on a routine supply run. During the visit, Rutaganda invites Paul to attend a Hutu Power rally happening later that day. Though Paul is clearly not interested, Rutaganda insists that he attend, telling Paul that it was time for him to "join his people", and gives him an Interahamwe shirt.
Later, when Rutaganda is loading up Paul's hotel supplies, one of the warehouse workers accidentally drops a massive crate, breaking it open and revealing that it contained machetes. Paul is clearly disturbed when he sees this, but Rutaganda simply laughs the accident off and states that he had purchased the machetes from China at a good price.
That night, Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana is assassinated when his plane is shot down. In the following days, genocide breaks out as members of the Interahamwe, as well as official Rwandan Army forces, begin killing Tutsis en masse, with Rutaganda himself actively committing acts of wanton mass murder, rape, and torture.
As the genocide is happening, Paul is doing his best to run the Hotel Milles Collines as normal, but this becomes more difficult over time as the hotel becomes more like a refugee camp, with the only thing protecting the hotel from the wrath of the Interahamwe being the protection Paul received from Rwandan Army chief, General Augustin Bizimungu.
Paul makes another supply run to Rutaganda's warehouse during the height of the genocide. Upon arriving, Paul gets his first glimpse of the true horrors of the genocide, as Tutsi women - who Rutaganda describes as "witches" - are being kept at the warehouse as sex slaves. They are being held in appalling conditions, being tortured and abused out in the open.
This time around, Rutaganda has doubled the prices of his goods. He also attempts to convince Paul to stop protecting the Tutsis at the hotel, as they, along with every other Tutsi in the country, would end up dead soon enough anyway. Paul asks in disbelief if Rutaganda genuinely believed he would be able to kill all the Tutsis, to which he coldly replies, "Why not? We are halfway there already."
Before Paul (who is accompanied by Gregoire, one of his employees) leaves, Rutaganda asks him one last time to turn over the Tutsis at the hotel, warning him that the Army officials protecting him wouldn't be able to do so forever; he even offers to spare some of Paul's Tutsi friends in exchange. Paul, clearly uncomfortable, announces his intent to leave, but not before Rutaganda directs him to take the road by the river, because it is "clearer".
As Paul and Gregoire are driving back to the Milles Collines, the road eventually becomes unusually bumpy and too foggy to navigate. They stop to figure out why, only to realize why Rutaganda directed them to take that particular road in the first place: the entire road was covered with hundreds of Tutsi corpses, showing just how much progress they were making in the genocide.
Rutaganda is not seen in the film again, but the end title cards reveal that he was eventually captured by a UN tribunal and sentenced to life in prison for his crimes.
Trivia[]
- The real Georges Rutaganda was indeed sentenced to life in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1996. At the time of the film's release, he was still alive and serving his sentence in Benin. He passed away in 2010 due to complications from an undisclosed illness.
- Interestingly, during the actual genocide, the real Rutaganda was the one who ordered the Interahamwe to halt their attack on the UN convoy containing Paul's wife and children, but only to avoid any possible further intervention from the UN and not for any noble purpose.
- Rutaganda is depicted as the overall leader of the Interahamwe in the film (at least of the Interahamwe based in Kigali); however, in real-life, Rutaganda was second-in-command to a man named Robert Kajuga (who, ironically, was half-Tutsi).
External Links[]
- Georges Rutaganda on the Pure Evil Wiki