International
Rwanda France relations: What does the future hold?
President Paul
Kagame is among the participants in person when a dozen African leaders,
several European leaders and some heads of international organizations on
Tuesday, May 18, attend the International Conference on Sudan and the Summit on
Financing African Economies, in Paris, France, on the invitation of French
President Emmanuel Macron.
The Rwandan
leader arrived in the French capital over the weekend. On the sidelines of the
Summit at the Grand Palais Éphémère, in Paris, Kagame
is holding bilaterals with his host and other French leaders, bearing on the
seemingly revived Rwanda-France rapprochement.
Macron is also
expected in the Rwandan capital next week.
Kagame's visit comes after the recent publication of two revealing
reports both highlighting the role of France in the 1994 genocide against the
Tutsi. First, there was the Duclert Commission's report, commissioned by the
French government, that was published in March 2021. It, among others,
concluded that France bears heavy and overwhelming responsibilities over the
1994 Genocide but - as has been charecteristic of France's denial - made no
mention of any evidence of French complicity.
Then there was the report of the Muse
investigation submitted to the Government
of Rwanda on April 19, 2021, detailing, among others, France's prior knowledge
of plans to exterminate the Tutsi and complicity despite the French government
avoiding the truth and failing to fully acknowledge its role and responsibility
in the genocide.
The Muse report concluded that the Genocide was foreseeable. From its
knowledge of massacres of civilians conducted by the government and its allies,
to the daily dehumanization of the Tutsi, to the cables and other data arriving
from Rwanda, the French government could see that a genocide was coming, reads
the report.
Adopting a more pragmatic stance, Kigali said the Muse report was not
a criminal investigation, but a fact-finding report meant to clarify historical
facts, especially the Elysée's role in the genocide. Macron and his
predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, 66, have shown signs of wanting to right the
wrongs. But they have not openly admitted the bitter fact that France was
complicit in the 1994 genocide, and apologised.
In March, Sarkozy, a one-term president from 2007-12, was found guilty
of corruption and handed a three-year prison sentence, dealing a blow to his
political ambitions. But, at least, now, 27 years later, a government in France
accepts bearing heavy and overwhelming responsibilities over the 1994 Genocide.
That is something. And, maybe, in future, Paris will be courageous enough to
take an extra step.
While in Paris, Kagame is scheduled to meet former French senior army
officers who served in Rwanda between 1990 and 1994 while he was the commander
of then rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) which was fighting the genocidal
regime that was backed by France.
Among those he is set to meet is Gen Jean Varret, 86, who oversaw
military cooperation between France and Rwanda between 1990 and 1993. In May
1993, French officials sidelined Varret, a leading critic of France’s Rwanda
policy. On May 20, 1993, French officials sidelined and ousted Varret as head
of the Military Cooperation Mission (MCM), replacing him with Gen Jean-Pierre
Huchon, then Mitterrand’s deputy
military advisor, at the rank of a Colonel. Huchon was promoted to head the
MCM. The MCM’s portfolio included military cooperation with about 26 countries,
but according to Varret, it was his dissenting views on France’s Rwanda policy,
specifically, that cost him the position.
Varret had taken on the MCM position in the Ministry of Cooperation in
October 1990, just as the war was starting. His concerns with French policy
took root soon afterward, when the chief of staff of Rwanda’s national
Gendarmerie, Col Pierre-Célestin
Rwagafilita, a bloodthirsty brute who dreamt only of exterminating the Tutsi,
pulled him aside to ask that France supply the FAR with weapons so that it
could “liquidate” the Tutsi. Varret has said that, after that, he issued a
series of “unambiguous” diplomatic reports and telegrams emphasizing “the risks
of a massacre of the Tutsi. The messages were not well received. When, in July
1991, France sent several officials to Rwanda, but excluded him, it was clear
to him that his point of view was not welcome.
Besides Varret, Kagame will also meet Brig Gen Éric de Stabenrath, who
was commandant of Opération Turquoise in
Gikongoro in 1994. The ailing Gen Patrice Sartre, who was part of the Turquoise
Operation between June and July 1994, may not make the meeting but others such
as Rene Galinie, 81, who was a military attaché at the French Embassy during
the genocide, and Amb. Yannick Gerard, former French envoy to Uganda and now
the Quai d'Orsay director for African affairs, among others, will.
These men, and several others, know the truth and have continuously
refused to be silenced but told the world what they heard and saw, first hand,
about France's direct involvement in the genocide.
Galinié of the French Gendarmerie had been on the ground in Rwanda
since August 1988, serving as the Defense Attaché and Head of the Military
Assistance Mission in Rwanda (August 1988-July 1991) and as Commanding Officer,
Operation Noroît (October 1990-July 1991, except November 1990), the military
operation under which Paris sent troops to Rwanda, under the cover of
protecting French citizens yet the mission was to provide military assistance
to the ill-trained genocidal government army, the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR).
Among others, on October 24, 1990, Galinié, warned of “the physical
elimination of the Tutsi within the country, 500,000 to 700,000 people.” Guillaume
Ancel, a former French military officer and author published books on foreign
military operations in Rwanda questioning the actions of the French state in
Rwanda during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. He recalls that Operation
Turquoise - which he participated in - was not a "strictly
humanitarian" operation but a cover to try to put the
Genocide masterminds back to power.
Therefore, Galinié, Varret, and all others, are not sellouts. Nor are
they crazy. They are human beings with a conscience, and courage. It is people
like them and others such as CPCR President Alain Gauthier, in France's civil
society, and a new generation in France that wants no links with the dark sad
past that light the candle of hope for the future.
The recent developments present a new opportunity to open a new page in the relations between Rwanda and France. Kigali has emphasised that this will require political will between the two parties, especially Paris.
Paris will have to, among others, have the political will to bring to
book all genocide fugitives and other criminal former Rwandan political leaders
and civil society who were exfiltrated into France in the aftermath of the
genocide. In May 2020, Felicien Kabuga, 84, the chief financier of the genocide
was arrested in Paris where he had been holed up for many years. But there are
still many more masterminds of the genocide living freely in France.
It remains to be seen how the new rapprochement will deal with these
top masterminds of the genocide against the Tutsi including Agathe Kanziga,
wife of former President of the genocidal regime Juvenal Habyarimana, or
unrepentant diehards in France's old guard such as former French prime minister
Edouard Balladur who rejected the findings of the Duclert Commission and also
denies the 1994 genocide committed against the Tutsi.
Besides, so much regarding the direction of the current rapprochement
will also be determined by who succeeds Macron mid next year after the upcoming
French presidential election.