France ‘enabled’ genocide, Rwanda report concludes

The French government bears “significant” responsibility for “enabling a foreseeable genocide”, a report commissioned by the Rwandan government concludes about France’s role before and during the horror in which an estimated 800,000 people were slaughtered in 1994.

The report comes amid efforts by Rwanda to document the role of French authorities before, during, and after the genocide, part of the steps by France’s President Emmanuel Macron to improve relations with the central African country.

The 600-page report says that France “did nothing to stop” the massacres, in April and May 1994, and in the years after the genocide tried to cover up its role and even offered protection to perpetrators.

It concludes that in years leading up to the genocide, former French President Francois Mitterrand and his administration had knowledge of preparations for the massacres — yet supported the government of the then-Rwandan President Juve´nal Habyarimana despite “warning signs”.

“The French government was neither blind nor unconscious about the foreseeable genocide,” the authors stress.

The Rwandan report comes less than a month after a French report, commissioned by Macron, concluded French authorities had been “blind” to the preparations for genocide and reacted too slowly to appreciate the extent of the killings. It concluded that France had “heavy and overwhelming responsibilities” by not responding to the drift that led to the slaughter that killed mainly ethnic Tutsis and the moderate Hutus who tried to protect them. Groups of extremist Hutus carried out the killings.

A top official in Macron’s office yesterday welcomed the report as a “decisive step” which showed “the willingness expressed by Rwandan authorities to write a shared history and, above all, to look to a common future”.