Rwanda: A sordid page has finally been turned for the French soldiers who have been dishonored by assuming such lies

Guillaume Ancel

Guillaume Ancel welcomes, in "Le Monde", President Macron's speech on May 27, in Kigali. A political gesture which, for this veteran of Operation "Turquoise" organized by France in Rwanda, "restores the truth by facing reality" and puts an end to twenty-seven years of denial. In a historic speech in Kigali on May 27, President Emmanuel Macron officially recognized France's “overwhelming” responsibility and subtly asked forgiveness from the Rwandan people.

Relief and emotion in front of this political gesture which restores the truth by facing reality and restores "at the same time" the dignity of France, compromised by a handful of decision-makers around François Mitterrand for having supported the genocidaires of Rwanda, in a hallucinated geopolitics to the detriment of all humanity.

Certainly, the French people did not participate in the genocide - which we had never doubted - but by giving their support to the Hutu extremists who were putting into place a "final solution" against the Tutsi, they [French people] were in fact transformed into “collaborators” of these Nazis from Rwanda. I was.

From 1990 to 1994, without the French people knowing it, we fought alongside those who were preparing the genocide. We helped them to multiply by seven their army, which would become the spearhead of this horror. We have even helped them to form "self-defense militias" who will be, at the end, the death squads of their appalling agenda.

We disrupted the investigation

In April 1994, did we only close our eyes when a team of mercenaries came to prepare the attack against President Juvénal Habyarimana, from the Kanombe military camp occupied by the Rwandan “elite units” that we were “instructing”?

We stole the black boxes from the plane at the scene of the crash to disrupt the investigation and disseminated false evidences provided by their Himmler, Colonel Bagosora [presented as the mastermind of the Rwandan genocide, he was sentenced to life, in 2008, by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)].

We welcomed the Nazis from Rwanda to the French Embassy so that they could constitute an "interim government", which will be the government of the genocidaires, even against the Arusha Peace Agreements [signed on August 4, 1993 and under from which the UN peacekeepers take over from the French military presence], which was called "Munich" at the Elysée...

A delegation received in Paris

And when our planes landed the next day in Kigali to evacuate the foreign nationals, they unloaded more weapons for these criminal hordes. Several dozen of our elite soldiers remained behind for a mission that is still carefully hidden. In the midst of the genocide, the Elysée officially received a delegation led by their Goebbels and we continued to assure them of our support and our weapons. In June 1994, we commemorated the 50^th anniversary of the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre with a formidable: "Never again!" of President Mitterrand, while our allies repeated these massacres 15 times a day, 10,000 deaths per day for a hundred days.

On the 75^th day of the massacres, while our brilliant allies were losing in the face of the soldiers of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) led by Paul Kagame, we launched Operation "Turquoise", under "UN humanitarian mandate", to send the best units of the French army to fight against ... the enemies of the genocidaires, these RPF soldiers that we keep calling our enemy.

And when our soldiers met the Tutsi survivors of the Bisesero hills, they were ordered to let them fall to our allies who massacred them, because the mission set by the Elysée was clear: to stop our enemies rather than the genocidaires. Three days later, my comrades from the Special Forces disobeyed, without saying it, and finally helped the survivors of Bisesero, but they were blamed.

The French army then created, by order, a "safe humanitarian zone" which saved the army of genocidaires’. We were even forced to carry out raids inside this area, which we were "protecting", to save some Tutsi survivors from the exterminating will of the SS who had freely settled there.

The destruction continued

We could have stopped there, in this disaster, but we were obliged to go until the end. The organizers of the genocide went to Cyangugu, where there was a French military camp, the one of which I was a part of. Its commander was forced to escort those responsible for the genocide to the border with Zaire, now Congo, even if he had demanded to arrest them.

These criminals did not go alone: ​​they were able to keep Radio Libre des Mille Collines, which broadcast their odious orders, and they triggered the forced exodus of the Hutu population to continue their "resistance", the destruction of the Tutsi. We delivered them weapons again and we even offered our advice to develop a new strategy.

These fights still go on in eastern Congo [with the “second Congo war”, from 1998 to 2002, then that in Kivu], causing nearly 300,000 deaths, ten times more lives massacred than those “saved” by Operation "Turquoise", which, in fact, saved the genocidaires.

An unjustifiable truth 

Voices were raised in France to demand explanations. But the truth was unjustifiable and unacceptable, so officials at the time invented "alternative" theses to ease their responsibilities and bury this French disaster.

Some leaders of them, for twenty-seven years, Hubert Védrine [Secretary General of the Elysée from 1991 to 1995] directs the actions: would there not have been a second genocide, committed by the Tutsi? Who would counterbalance the horror of the one they had endured? Wouldn't President Kagame have organized the assassination of President Habyarimana himself to trigger the genocide? Couldn't Tutsis have infiltrated these militias who were dismembering theirs in order to turn them into executioners?

Denial is not only denying the genocide against the Tutsi, it is also seeking to reduce the responsibility of those who committed it or, worse, to turn the executioners into victims.

On May 27, with solemnity, with chosen words, with a humility to which he had not accustomed us, President Macron restored the balance of values ​​that honor our nation and our society, the ability to face reality, the ability to learn from failures and the strength to recognize mistakes.

For the French soldiers, who have been imposed, a delusional policy of collaboration, who have been imposed a deadly silence and the dishonor of accepting such lies, a sordid page of our policy has finally been turned. Because the honor of a soldier lies in his humanity much more than in his discipline, and that is why my heart felt relieved by listening to this young president freeing us from the shame of having collaborated. 

Source: lemonde.fr