France bears the burden of “heavy and blunt responsibilities” in the Rwandan genocide, but was not an accomplice to the massacre, according to the conclusions of an official commission created by Emmanuel Macron.
About 800,000 people, mostly from Rwanda’s ethnic Tutsi minority, were slaughtered in a murder spree in 1994. The report released on Friday confirmed long-standing and persistent accusations that France did not do enough to stop the killings, but said that there was no evidence of complicity in the massacres.
“The Rwanda crisis ended in disaster for Rwanda and defeat for France,” says the report. “But is France complicit in the Tutsi genocide? If that means a willingness to join the genocidal enterprise, nothing in the archives consulted proves it. “
The commission concluded: “However, for a long time France has been involved in a regime that encouraged racist massacres. He remained blind to the preparation of a genocide by the most radical elements of this regime. “
The 1,200-page report was presented to the French president on Friday by historian Vincent Duclert, head of the 15-member commission whose researchers worked on the subject for two years and had access to sensitive documents from diplomatic and military intelligence.
The Rwandan government welcomed the release of the report as “an important step towards a common understanding of France’s role in the genocide” and said it would publish its own study in the coming weeks.
Accusations that France, then led by Socialist President François Mitterrand, may have played a role in the genocide have undermined Franco-Rwandan relations for most of the past three decades.
The massacres began when a plane carrying Juvénal Habyarimana, the government leader led by Hutu in Rwanda, and Burundi’s president, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was shot down on April 6, 1994.
The deaths started the next day and continued until July 15. For more than 100 days, armed militias massacred members of the Tutsi ethnic group and some moderate Hutus in a wave of brutality that shocked the international community, although no external country has intervened to prevent the killings.
Many in small villages were killed by neighbors themselves using machetes and rifles. Between 250,000 and 500,000 women are believed to have been raped.
French troops led a military-humanitarian intervention called Operation Turquoise, launched by Paris under a UN mandate between June and August 1994, but critics said the intention was to support the Hutu government responsible for the genocide, a statement confirmed by the report.
The commission said that Paris adopted “a binary scheme opposing, on the one hand, the friend Hutu, personified by President Habyarimana, and, on the other hand, the enemy described as ‘Uganda-Tutsis’ to designate the RPF [Rwandan Patriotic Front].
“At the time of the genocide, it took a long time to break with the interim government that was committing the genocide and continued to put the RPF threat at the top of its agenda,” the report said.
“He reacted belatedly with Operation Turquoise, which saved many lives, but not those of the vast majority of Rwandan Tutsis, who were wiped out in the first weeks of the genocide. The research, therefore, establishes a set of responsibilities, which are heavy and overwhelming. “
Rwanda President Paul Kagame accused France in 2014 of being involved “before, during and after the genocide” and refused to allow then Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira and the French ambassador to participate in the 20th anniversary celebrations of the genocide.
Macron has made efforts to pressure France to examine its colonial past. The Rwandan commission report follows a recent dossier submitted to the Elysée by historian Benjamin Stora on the role of the French military in the Algerian war of independence. Stora asked for a “truth commission”.
Macron hopes that the content of the Rwanda report will facilitate relations between Paris and Kigali in preparation for a visit he plans to make later this year.