Citation
J'accuse senior French officials of complicity in Rwanda's 1994
genocide, of cynically arming thousands of murderous maniacs, despite
an international arms embargo, and of covering up crimes against
humanity. I further accuse them of deliberately tricking French
officers into providing a save haven for killers, and rescuing evil
men as part of Operation Turquoise, a ``humanitary mission''.
Exactly 100 years before the genocide, when Emile Zola wrote
J'accuse to expose the wrongful conviction of (Jewish) Captain Alfred
Dreyfus for spying, he set in motion a debate that split the country
and disgraced the army. Today France's behaviour again seems far from
honourable.
Four years ago this week the mysterious assassination of the Presidents
of Rwanda an Burundi, both members of the Hutu tribe, in a mid-air
explosion over Kigali sparked genocide by Hutu extremists. For three
months an average of 37,500 Tutsis and Hutu moderates were slaughtered
each day, most of them hacked with machetes and bludgeoned with clubs.
No one has emerged from this horrour with any honour. The media, myself
included, were slow to recognize the scale of the ``ethnic
blood-letting''. When it became clear that the killing was planned,
well-organised and on a massive scale, President Clinton banned his
State Department officials from calling it ``genocide''; last the United
States be called upon to fulfill international legal obligations to
intervene. The British government sat on its hands. We must all share
in a collective guilt that we did nothing to stop the
genocide. Arguments that there was nothing that could have been done
are stupid. Well trained and armed Western soldiers could have stopped
the slaughter in a matter of days.
But while we contemplate our guilt of omission, the French have a
heavier burden to bear. A small clique of individuals inside the
administration was wholeheartedly conniving in a massacre. This week
Edouard Balladur, the then French Prime Minister, said that press
reports of French backing of les génocidaires were ``scandalous''
and ``revolting''. Other members of his Government have blamed Paul
Kagame's Tutsi rebels for bringing down the presidential plane, and of
killing as many Hutus as the Hutus killed Tutsis.
The following facts are not in doubt. France armed the Hutu army
before, during, and after the genocide. French troops rescued among
others, Colonel Theoneste Bagosora (Chef de cabinet in the Hutu
government and the evil genious behind the genocide) in July 1994 as
the Tutsi rebels closed in on Butare. French troops who did arrest
members of the Interahamwe, a brotherhood of killers, released
several of them before they could be handled over to United Nations
officers and charged.
In addition, special forces officers such as Captain Gillier (who was
last week singled out for turning a blind eye to killings in Operation
Turquoise) were pumped full of false information by their superiors, who
described Tutsi survivors as ``rebel infiltrators''. At first, he
regarded the Tutsis as the enemy, but he soon compared the killings to
Nazi atrocities.
Part of the explanation for these actions can be put down to an
obsession inside ``the French cell'' [``the African cell''] of the
Elysee Palace (which runs policy in Africa) with an ``Anglo-Saxon
conspiracy'' -- the theory that Britain and America are trying to usurp
France in her traditional spheres of influence. Bernard Debré who was
cooperation minister in 1994, said this week that he did'nt want to
``portray a showdown between the French and the Anglo-Saxons, but the
truth must be told''. This theory has real credence in the Elysée - but
surely the French Government could not have been prepared to back a
genocide as a mean to combat the spread of English from Uganda, where
the Tutsi rebels were based ?
This year the French parliament reluctantly opened a commission of
inquiry into the French role in Rwanda, which is likely to be as
divisive and damaging as the 1894 Dreyfus Affair and the shame of the
Vichy administration. Many serving and former French ministers will
appear before the commission and lie. Their statements will make fools
of honourable French officers who took part in Operation Turquoise and
who are anxious to clear their names. M. Balladur said he would
testify before the commission so that ``the honour of France and the
French Army would be sheltered from completely injust attacks''.
Men like Captain Gillier, now French naval attaché in Egypt, should
not let their political masters continue to cover up France's
activities in Rwanda. The French armed forces have a chance to show
that they have more honour than the politicians who ambarassed them in
Rwanda. They may be among the few who can explain why France backed
the Hutu extremists. If they break military protocol and disclose who
gave them their orders, it might be possible to trace the criminals
who have so shamed them.
