France cannot cover up for its role in Genocide forever

Editor, RE: “New report links France to Genocide in Rwanda” (The New Times, December 13). Whatever efforts by France to conceal its role in the Genocide against the Tutsi, facts will always prove otherwise. This report, by the Cunningham Levy Muse Law Firm, says that French officials facilitated the flow of weapons into Rwanda in the build-up to the Genocide, despite knowing about violent attacks against the Tutsi in the country. It also says that despite knowledge of recurring massacres of the Tutsi during the early 1990s, French officials allowed génocidaires (perpetrators of the Genocide) to meet within the French Embassy in Kigali and begin to form the interim government that presided over Rwanda during the Genocide. It further states that during the 1990-1994 war, French officials defined the Tutsi as the threat, while extremists promoted anti-Tutsi propaganda and massacred Tutsi. It explains that, from 1990 through March 1994, France was aware of the Habyarimana government’s involvement in massacres of the Tutsi and yet continued to provide arms and ammunition to the regime. It adds that after the massacres of the Bagogwe in the northwest of the country between January and March 1991, which claimed over 300 lives, France reinforced its Military Assistance Mission in Rwanda with additional soldiers from the Panda DAMI. All these are a few facts among many proving France’s role in the planning and execution of the Genocide. However, despite all the facts publicly available, France has always made a lot of efforts to conceal the role its military and political officials played in the Genocide. French officials have also continued to interfere with efforts to achieve truth and justice for the victims of the Genocide against the Tutsi. But I hope that as time goes on truth will win and light will shed over French hypocrisy. Bemba

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France cannot cover up for its role in Genocide forever