French President Emmanuel Macron, will be on an official visit to Rwanda next week, from May 27 to 28, according to media reports from Paris. During his 48-hour stay in the country, Macron is expected to visit the Kigali Genocide Memorial - the final resting place for more than 250,000 victims of the Genocide against the Tutsi - to lay a wreath and honour Genocide victims. He will meet with his host, President Paul Kagame, and both leaders are at some point expected to hold a joint press conference, the media reports indicate. Yolande Mukagasana, a Genocide survivor and president of the Yolande Mukagasana Foundation whose objectives include fighting against denial and revisionism of the 1994 Genocide, told The New Times that the arrival of President Macron is one more step in his commitment to sincere relations between France and Rwanda. Mukagasana, who is welcoming the French President to Rwanda, said dialogue is necessary to settle the accounts between our two countries. Mukagasana added: It is also proof that our President and the French President want to rebuild a better future for our respective peoples since they open up a space for unequivocal dialogue. We should be proud of it. We cannot erase history. But together we can write a new page for the future in mutual sincerity and respect, because Rwanda has looked to the future. This is the new Rwanda. We cannot forget what the French authorities were like at the time during the war of liberation and the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, even if it is the continuity of the State. Among the expected outcomes of better ties between both countries is the eventual bringing to justice Genocide masterminds who have found safe haven in France. France is home to at least 47 indicted Genocide suspects and hundreds of genocide deniers and revisionists that comprise members of the old regime that was involved in backing the 1994 genocidal regime in Rwanda. Macron will need a lot of courage Alain Gauthier, president of Collectif des Parties Civiles pours le Rwanda (CPCR), a rights group which has for nearly two decades worked to bring to book Genocide suspects living in France, told The New Times that Macron will need a lot of courage to oppose the entire French political class if he decides to apologize, to ask forgiveness, not only from Rwanda, but above all from the victims of the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi, the survivors, who, for more than 27 years, suffer in their flesh and in their heart. The CPCR, which has fought alongside them for so many years, would not understand if strong words of truth were not spoken by President Macron, Gauthier said. Even though there are individuals like Bernard Kouchner, former French Foreign Minister under President Nicolas Sarkozy, who would like to own up and embrace a better mutual relationship, and future, Gauthier is bothered by the fact that some diehard old guards in the French establishment still refuse to accept their role in the 1994 genocide. These, he said include Alain Juppé, who was French foreign minister during the Genocide, former French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, and Hubert Vedrine, Secretary General of the French presidency during the Genocide, among others. The announcement of Macrons upcoming visit came as President Kagame on Monday, May 17, joined Heads of State and Government from across Africa and heads of financial institutions at the International Conference on Sudan, in Paris. Kagame also met Macron on the sidelines of the conference. Speaking in an interview with French media outlets on Monday, Kagame said that Rwanda and France are on the path to normalization of ties. Kagame said he thinks France and Rwanda have a chance and good basis on which to create a good relationship as it should have been, the rest we can leave behind us. He said the recent publication of reports by two independent commissions on France’s role in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda was an important step towards establishment of warm ties. French historian Vincent Duclert in April officially handed over a report commissioned in 2019 by Macron to probe the then French government role in the 1994 Genocide. The Duclert Commissions 1,200-page report, among others, concludes that France bears heavy and overwhelming responsibilities over the 1994 Genocide but makes no mention of any evidence of French complicity. The report concludes that France led by François Mitterrand during the Genocide, was blind to preparations of the massacres but this conclusion was debunked by another report unveiled on April 19, by Robert Muse of the US law firm, Levy Firestone Muse. The Muse report detailed France’s role in the 1994 Genocide and especially indicated that the French Government at the time bears a significant responsibility in failing to prevent a foreseeable Genocide. The French government, the report shows, saw all the signs and was aware of the planning and execution of the genocide, did not act to prevent it but actually acted in various ways - militarily and politically - to support the mass killers.
