PARIS – Blinded by the fear of losing influence in Africa and by a colonial vision of the peoples of the continent, France remained close to the “racist, corrupt and violent regime” responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and carries “serious and overwhelming” responsibilities, according to a report released Friday.
But the report – commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron in 2019 and prepared by 15 historians with unprecedented access to the archives of the French government – wiped France out of complicity in the genocide that led to the death of 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and contributed to decades of conflict and instability in Central Africa.
“Is France an accomplice in the Tutsi genocide? If by that we mean the willingness to participate in a genocidal operation, nothing in the files examined shows that, ” said the report, which was presented to Macron on Friday afternoon.
But the commission said France had long been involved in the Rwandan Hutu government, even when that government was preparing the Tutsi genocide, considering the country’s leadership as a crucial ally in the French sphere of influence in the region.
For decades, France’s actions during the genocide have been a source of intense debate in Africa and Europe, with critics accusing France of not having done enough to prevent the deaths or of having actively supported the Hutu government behind the genocide. The unresolved story has long poisoned relations between France and the government of President Paul Kagame, the Tutsi leader who controlled Rwanda for nearly a quarter of a century.
Mr. Macron, who spoke of his desire to restart France’s relations with a continent where he was a colonial power, is believed to have commissioned the report to try to improve relations with Rwanda.
Although the 992-page report presents new information from the French government’s archives, it is unlikely to resolve the debate over France’s role during the genocide, said Filip Reyntjens, a Belgian genocide expert.
“This will not be good enough for one side and it will not be good enough for the other side,” said Reyntjens. “So, my guess is that it will not resolve the issue. ”
According to the report, François Mitterrand, the then French president, maintained a “strong, personal and direct relationship” with Juvenal Habyarimana, the former Hutu president of Rwanda, despite his “racist, corrupt and violent regime”.
Mitterrand and members of his inner circle believed that Habyarimana and the Hutus were key allies in a French-speaking bloc that also included Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo, then known as Zaire.
The French saw Kagame and other Tutsi leaders – who spent years in exile in neighboring English-speaking Uganda – as allies in an American onslaught in the region.
“The main interest of this country for France is that it be French-speaking,” ‘wrote a senior military officer in 1990, according to the report, which concluded: “France’s interpretation of the situation in Rwanda can be seen from the prism of the Francophonie defense. ”
French leaders at the time viewed Hutus and Tutsis through colonial lenses, attributing stereotyped physical traits and behavior to each group, aggravating their misinterpretation of the events that led to the genocide, according to the report.
In one of the most striking conclusions of the report, its authors wrote: “France’s failure in Rwanda, whose causes are not all its own, can be compared, in this respect, to a final imperial defeat, all the more significant because it was neither expressed nor recognized. ”