Rwandan President Paul Kagame on Wednesday welcomed a report released last month which declared that France “bears overwhelming responsibilities” for its part in the 1994 genocide.
The report led by Historian Vincent Duclert was commissioned by France’s President Emmanuel Macron and released last month. The genocide took place between April and July of 1994 began after Rwanda’s Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down over Kigali on Apr. 6. More than 800,000 Tutsis were killed.
Happening Now: President Paul Kagame delivering his remarks at Kigali Arena, to mark the beginning of #Kwibuka27 activities. He said that 27 down the road, bodies of victims are still being discovered in different parts of the country, yet people who killed them still walk free. pic.twitter.com/4DfvPFFb5v
— KT Press Rwanda (@ktpressrwanda) April 7, 2021
“We welcome this (report),” Kagame said per the AP News. “Mitterrand knew that a genocide against the Tutsis was being planned by their allies in Rwanda” but continued “supporting them because he believed this was necessary for France’s geopolitical position.”
Kagame made the remarks during a ceremony to commemorate the beginning of the genocide. The report said France under François Marie Adrien Maurice Mitterrand fostered a “binary view” that established Rwanda’s then-president Juvénal Habyarimana as a “Hutu ally” against an “enemy” of Tutsi troops backed by Uganda.
The report also stated that France had been “involved with a regime that encouraged racist massacres.” It stops short of accusing France of participating in the genocide.
PICTORIAL: Earlier, President Paul Kagame & the First Lady Mrs. Jeannette Kagame, together with the Dean of Diplomatic Corps & a representative of Genocide survivors, laid wreath & lit the remembrance flame at @Kigali_Memorial, to mark the beginning of #Kwibuka27 activities. pic.twitter.com/3xs2JYIzim
— KT Press Rwanda (@ktpressrwanda) April 7, 2021
France led Operation Turquoise, humanitarian purposes in June 1994. Many believed the operation was actually to assist the genocidal Hutu government.
“Rather than protecting Tutsis from the genocidal regime, Opération Turquoise was co-opted to allow the perpetrators to continue their campaign of violence and eventually escape the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) advance by fleeing into neighboring Zaire,” a 2018 report published by Divergent Options reads. “The results of this would prove disastrous.”
UPDATE: After laying the wreath at @Kigali_Memorial, where over 250, 000 victims of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi are buried, President Paul Kagame & the First Lady Jeannette Kagame have arrived at Kigali Arena, where he will deliver remarks to a select group of invitees. pic.twitter.com/EfgY8HZ3nw
— KT Press Rwanda (@ktpressrwanda) April 7, 2021
While he praised the integrity of the report, Kagame did condemn “the decades-long effort by certain French officials to cover up their responsibilities,” saying it had caused “significant damage.”
On Wednesday, France opened its archives on the Rwandan genocide to the public. Duclert told The Associated Press that “for 30 years, the debate on Rwanda was full of lies, violence, manipulations, threats of trials. That was a suffocating atmosphere”.
“Now we must speak the truth,” he added. “And that truth will allow, we hope, (France) to get a dialogue and a reconciliation with Rwanda and Africa.”
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