The Backstory | After Hotel Rwanda
Slate Presents
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2024
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tensions between ethnic Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda began long before the 1994 genocide—a vestige of Belgian colonial rule in the country. On this episode, we trace the events leading up to the mass killing—and how they affected Paul and his wife.
After Hotel Rwanda tells the story of Paul Rusesabagina, a human rights activist who in 2020 was lured from his home in San Antonio, Texas, to his former country of Rwanda, where he was tried on terrorism charges and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Rusesabagina had been a national hero in Rwanda for saving the lives of more than twelve hundred people during the 1994 genocide there. A decade later, his story was told in the Oscar-nominated movie Hotel Rwanda. Our four-part series describes how Rusesabagina went from hero to dissident in Rwanda—and how a team of supporters in Washington and elsewhere managed eventually to bring him home. The story is reported by Foreign Policy staff writer Robbie Gramer.
Join Slate Plus to unlock all seasons of Slate Presents, including After Hotel Rwanda—plus ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from our show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or visit slate.com/podcastplus for access wherever you listen.
Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | A few months ago, I had the chance to visit the Rosessa Bikina family at their home in San Antonio, Texas. |
| 0:19.1 | We talked mostly about Paul's prison ordeal. |
| 0:21.6 | But I also asked Paul's wife, Tatiana, about her childhood, about growing up in Rwanda. |
| 0:27.6 | She said something that surprised me. |
| 0:30.6 | I did not know even that I was a Tutsi. |
| 0:33.6 | Tatiana, of course, lived through the genocide in 1994. She was with Paul, trapped in the hotel he |
| 0:41.5 | managed then, where more than 1,200 people had taken shelter. The mass killings that took place |
| 0:48.0 | outside the walls of the hotel and across the country would wipe out more than 75% of the country's |
| 0:53.7 | Tutsi population, along with moderate Hutus. It came to defraudu the country would wipe out more than 75% of the country's Tutsi population, along with |
| 0:55.9 | moderate Hutus. It came to define Paul's life and his improbable journey to prison in Rwanda |
| 1:02.3 | 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 |
| 1:13.1 | experience. |
| 1:14.2 | When I was in a fourth grade, at the school, I remember that time they asked people to stand |
| 1:22.7 | up, Hutu to stand up, Tootsie to stand up, and I stand up with the Hutu, I stand up with the Tootsis. |
| 1:31.7 | The teacher said, why do you stand up with everybody? |
| 1:37.2 | Welcome to After Hotel Rwanda, a special four-part series from Foreign Policy about Paul Recessa Begina, how we went from |
| 1:45.6 | being a hero in Rwanda to being kidnapped, imprisoned in his home country, and eventually freed. |
| 1:52.3 | I'm Robbie Grammer. |
| 1:57.7 | In our first episode, I described how in 2020, Paul was lured from his home in San Antonio, Texas, to Rwanda. |
| 2:05.7 | He thought he was flying to the country of Burundi, for what he said was a big speaking event with a church there. |
| 2:12.3 | But it was an elaborate trap, orchestrated by the Rwandan security services. |
| 2:19.8 | On the plane, he said he was drugged. He woke up in Kukali, the capital of Rwanda, where he was jailed on charges of |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.