Genocide: Why France cannot dispense justice

Editor, RE: “Spain has done it. France, the Vatican too, can do the just thing” (The New Times, October 13). As usual, thanks a lot for the insightful article. However, sometimes, I feel we ask for the impossible. If the Catholic Church and French government are themselves implicated in the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, directly or otherwise, how can they be expected to be the ones to move the wheels of justice? They will always do what we see them doing now because in most cases the accused were simply carrying out orders assigned by them. Obviously, they are even the ones indirectly behind these fraudulent indictments to incriminate the RPA heroes. But time is slowly catching up with them, because the God of all justice neither sleeps nor slumbers. Donart ************** I agree that it is extremely fanciful to expect the génocidaires’ active accomplices to try them for the crime in which they were complicit. Not only would such an unlikely course be counter to human nature, it would also be contrary to everything we have learnt from history. Of course the French might yet surprise us and really undertake prosecution of their genocidal allies, if for no other reason to attempt to whitewash their own reputation spattered by their involvement in the Genocide against the Tutsi. Such trials would be intended to shift all the blame for the Genocide on their erstwhile protégés and to put some distance between France and the génocidaires. And Paris would certainly succeed, for Rwandan survivors and Rwandans generally would prefer to see justice done than to have the satisfaction of upbraiding the French, no matter how justified we feel in doing so. As for the Spanish, for once I beg to disagree somewhat with those who are tempted to praise them for quashing the European arrest warrant for senior Rwandan officials. Not because I do not welcome its annulment, but because it should never have been issued in the first place. Praising them in this case is akin to applauding a firefighter for putting out a blaze he himself had lit, especially when that blaze has already inflicted some damage. Mwene Kalinda

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Genocide: Why France cannot dispense justice