Tatiana Rusesabagina
| Tatiana Rusesabagina | |
|---|---|
Tatiana in 2013
|
|
| Born |
Tatiana Mukangamije 24 October 1958 Butare, Rwanda |
| Spouse(s) |
Paul Rusesabagina (1989–present) |
Tatiana Rusesabagina (born October 24, 1958) is a Rwandan woman known for surviving the 1994 Rwandan Genocide with her husband Paul Rusesabagina. The couple ran Hôtel des Mille Collines during the genocide that saved over a thousand people from being murdered. Their story was used as the basis for the 2004 film Hotel Rwanda, in which Tatiana was portrayed by Sophie Okonedo, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as Tatiana.
She was born Tatiana Mukangamije in Butare. Her parents were Tutsi and they raised her Catholic. She trained to be a nurse and moved to Ruhengeri.
In 1987 while at a wedding, she met Paul Rusesabagina. At the time Paul was married to his wife, Esther, and he had three children, daughters Lys and Diane and son Roger. Esther and Paul soon divorced, and in 1989 Tatiana and Paul married. His ex-wife Esther is now deceased and Tatiana is stepmother to their children. They also had a son together, Tresor. She also gave birth to a daughter with Paul, that died a few days after birth. Paul and Tatiana are also the legal guardians of Anais and Karine, who are the children of Tatiana's brother Thomas and his wife Feden, who had gone missing during the Rwandan genocide.
When Tatiana was working as a nurse, she was facing discrimination because of her Tutsi ethnicity, and Paul arranged for her to be transferred to a different location in Kigali, where Paul was the manager of a hotel called the Hôtel des Mille Collines. Tatiana's mother was murdered in the genocide along with other family members and their bodies were thrown into a pit with many others. Her father paid to be killed by shooting, so that he did not have to die a more painful and horrific death. Her father had forged all of her family's identification cards to say that they were Hutu; however, the militia had other ways of tracking who was who. Two of her siblings survived the genocide.
Tatiana's family was targeted specifically because they were Tutsi, which the Hutu people were killing in mass in an attempt to make the Tutsi extinct. The conflict between these two ethnic groups goes back centuries in Rwanda. Paul's family was of mixed Hutu and Tutsi which meant he was not as much of a target as a full blood Tutsi.
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