Good articles from The Times on the subject:
An article by Linda Melvern, for full article, click here:
Drawing on documents recently released from the Paris archive of Mitterrand, the commission clearly describes the motive for French policy in Rwanda. These documents show how the RPF invasion was considered as clear aggression by an Anglophone neighbour on a Francophone country. The RPF was a part of an “Anglophone plot”, involving the President of Uganda, to create an English-speaking “Tutsi-land”. Once Rwanda was “lost” to Anglophone influence, French credibility in Africa would never recover. The policy was to avoid a military victory by the RPF.
My own work has shown that not all French military operatives left Rwanda when the UN peacekeepers arrived in 1993. When the genocide began six months later there were senior French officers attached to key units in the Rwandan Army - the para-commando and reconnaissance battalions, and the Presidential Guard. It was French-trained soldiers from these units who, early in the morning of April 7, had orders to eliminate members of Rwanda's political opposition - and to kill anyone with a Tutsi identity card. Without a full accounting from these French officers the story of the crucial early hours of genocide will never be complete. To date only three French officers have testified at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda - and only then in defence of Rwandan military officers on genocide charges.
An older article from 2006 by Andrew Wallis, for full version, click here:
As the body count grew, France welcomed ministers of the genocidal Government to an official reception in Paris. Meanwhile, its military continued to send arms to bolster its Hutu allies in power, regardless of the genocide they were perpetrating.
Rwanda report raises issue of motive
Martin Plaut, 05/08/08
A Rwandan report naming 33 senior French military and political figures for their alleged role in the 1994 genocide raises a number of issues.
For the French there is the problem of how to deal with the commission's detailed allegations against eminent figures.
Late President Francois Mitterrand, former Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, as well as two men who went on to become prime minister - Alain Juppe, foreign minister at the time, and his then chief aide, Dominique de Villepin - are all accused of having had a hand in such terrible events.
Allegations of this kind have been made before.
The French military were certainly involved in advising the Rwandan army prior to the genocide and their precise role during the genocide is far from clear.
Yet the fact that Rwanda has decided to publish such a damning report, making such detailed allegations against another country, makes the report extremely unusual.
Diversion tactic?
It certainly raises questions about Rwanda's motivation in taking this step.
The public reason given is a search for justice.As Rwanda's Minister of Justice Tharcisse Karugarama put it to the BBC, those responsible for the Jewish Holocaust are still being hunted down decades after World War II, so why should we rest while the people behind the genocide are still at large?
But other reasons have spurred Rwanda to take this step.
Chief among them has been an iron determination to keep the world's attention focused on the genocide, rather than on the role of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the force that took power in 1994, bringing President Paul Kagame to power.
In recent years uncomfortable questions have been raised about the war crimes the RPF are alleged to have committed during and after 1994.
While stressing there can be no equation between genocide and war crimes, Alison Des Forges of Human Rights Watch says RPF leaders do have a case to answer.
"Their victims also deserve justice," she says.
The case against the RPF:
- The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was mandated to look at all crimes committed in 1994, yet with their mandate supposed to run out by the end of this year they have so far failed to indict any members of the RPF.
- In 2006 a French judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, issued arrest warrants against nine of President Paul Kagame's senior officials, alleging their complicity in the murder of the late Rwandan President, Juvenal Habyarimana, in April 1994 - the event that sparked off the genocide.
- And in February 2008 a Spanish judge, Fernando Andreu, issued international arrest warrants against 40 senior Rwandan officials for crimes allegedly committed in the 1990s.
Painful questions
There is also a political dimension.
Since the RPF took power, relations with France have been distinctly cool.
President Kagame and his closest associates come from a group of English-speaking Tutsi refugees who grew up in Uganda.
The country has moved away from the French sphere of influence in Africa and towards the Anglophone bloc.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is now an adviser of President Kagame, and former American President Bill Clinton is a close friend.
Rwanda believes it does not need France and feels free to raise painful questions about Paris's role in the genocide.
2 comments:
Is it ok for the West to summon war criminals from the third world, such as the Balkans and the Middle East, while its own atrocities pass unnoticed?
"Unnoticed" is not, perhaps, the word you wanted. May I recommend "with impunity" instead?
The former colonies have long accused 'mother France' of being nothing but a hypocritical Western power seeking its own interests. In the current age where France, and indeed other Western powers, are fighting to maintain their legitimacy in the affairs of third world states, Paris needs to demonstrate leadership, swallow its own rhetoric on human rights and investigate the Rwandan allegations against its high officials.
Well, I think this phrasing is counter-productive. Basically what we have here is a conflict within the polities/leadership of many countries (not merely France, or even the OECD members) over the ideal developmental model. The regime in Rwanda (1974-1994) was regarded as a countervailing case to the preferred neoliberal "Washington Consensus," and Mitterrand (among others) seems to have convinced himself that the RPF was actually a creation of the Anglo-Saxons, partly to gain a strategic foothold in the region, partly to thwart a rival developmental model, and partly to humiliate France.
I understand from A. des Forges ("That none may live to tell") that there was a severe division within the French foreign service, with professional foreign service officers generally hostile to the PS leadership on Rwanda.
Perhaps I was too haste to criticise France, based more so on their dealings in the Middle East than in Africa.
I see little difference between President Kagame and President Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
The only reason we hear so little of Kagame in Anglo-media is because he is backed by the US and the UK, whereas Mugabe is not. Likewise in France, there's perhaps more publicity surrounding its opponent in Kagame than Mugabe.
However, there is a clear current that stems from Western dealings with Rwanda (and Africa in general) to the Middle East.
The US, UK, France and Belgium each exploited the tribal, traditional hierarchal establishment of Rwanda-Burundi and exacerbated the conflict for their own purposes. The US, indeed, trained Kagame and lent his Tutsi militia aid.
But France's direct and explicit involvement in the genocide is the issue here.
We know that France supported the Hutus, we know that the French stationed troops in Rwanda during the genocide, and we know that killings of Tutsis took place in regions under French control. Whether they were directly done by French troops or not is what is being debated here.
Of course, this doesn't excuse Kagame's atrocities, which continued long after the 1993-1994 genocide.
Your reference to "development models" is quite vague. From experience with the West in the Middle East (Iraq today a prime example), there appears nothing genuine or sincere about Western involvement but to enhance its own interest, often at the detriment of others.
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