While you're listening to this podcast, we wanted to include a word from our

sponsor, the Human Rights Foundation, with a mission of standing up to authoritarian regimes worldwide.

What sets HRF apart is its singular focus on challenging dictatorships.

With more than 5 billion people living under authoritarian regimes today, their

mission is more critical than ever.

From Syria to North Korea to Russia, HRF fights for the rights of the oppressed.

They believe that when they rise, tyranny falls.

Join HRF in their mission to advance for freedom and democracy at H.R.F.org today.

A few months ago I had the chance to visit the Rossebe-Gina family at their home in San Antonio, Texas.

We talked mostly about Paul's prison ordeal, but I also ask Paul's wife, Tautiana, about her childhood, about growing up in Rwanda.

She said something that surprised me.

I did not know even that I was a topsy.

Tatiana, of course, lived through the genocide in 1994.

She was with Paul, trapped in the hotel he managed then, where more than 1,200 people had taken shelter.

The mass killings that took place outside the walls of the hotel and across the country would wipe out more than 75% of the country's Tutsi population,

along with moderate Hutus. It came to define Paul's life and his improbable journey to prison in Rwanda in 2020.

But the Rwanda of 1994 was a lot different from the Rwanda of the 1960s

when Tatiana was growing up, at least in her own experience.

When I was in a four grade at the school, I remember that time they asked people to stand up, Hutu to stand up, Tutsi to stand up, and I stand up with Hutu, I stand up with the Tutsi,

I stand up with the Tutsi.

They said, the teacher said, I stand up with the two seasons.

The teacher said, why do you stand up with everybody?

...