Editor,

REFERENCE IS made to the article, "We are not a generation of denial: French youth” (The New Times, June 24).

We salute these young people’s courage in calling for truth about the complicity of their ruling elites in the Genocide against the Tutsi 20 years ago. It would have been so much more politically expedient not to rock the boat about the consensus among the French establishment to leave the skeletons of their massive Rwandan misdeeds firmly locked in the cupboards, protected against the light by equally massive efforts of denial, revisionism and of misinformation and browbeating of the few courageous activists demanding that France fully and honestly accounts for its role in the genocide before, during, and after.

That said, perhaps a few clarifications are still apt. Those working so furiously to prevent any debate about their role in the genocide are not motivated merely by saving their "honour”. Their fear is more fundamental; it is to avoid legal jeopardy for their responsibilities in the crime of genocide. Their efforts in this regard extend beyond often tending "to sound like denial speech”.

It is plumbed in the depths of genocide denial and revisionism, including attempts at role reversals to transform the victims into the perpetrators and vice versa. At other times—often concurrently—they have engaged in an absurd campaign of blaming the victims for their own victimization, in order to absolve the perpetrators and themselves of any blame.

Like the génocidaires who wanted to ensure every Hutu participated in the "work” of extermination in order to make justice impossible to administer in post-genocide justice, French accomplices wanted to shield themselves behind France’s "honour”, ensuring that any attacks against them for their role in the Genocide would be turned into attacks against France, therefore forcing the entire state to circle the protective wagons around them.

The strategy has worked so far, but has hopefully perhaps reached the limits of its usefulness with the decision of these youth to refuse to wear this mantle of shame.

Mwene Kalinda, Rwanda