French rights groups are pushing for their government to declassify information relating to its operations in Rwanda from 1990 onwards. 

Survie (French for ‘survival’), League of Human Rights (LDH), and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) on May 28 requested judges to consent to the declassification of the documents and, intend to press further this weekend, The New Times has learnt. 

Alain Gauthier, head of another rights group, Collectif des Parties Civiles pour le Rwanda (CPCR), said his group is associated with the push to have old secrets put in the open. 

Gauthier said a delegation will this weekend present to Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French minister for defence, a fresh request for the declassification of the "secret documents” concerning the role of the 1994 French government in Rwanda. 

"It seems essential to try to shed light on the role of the French government, and the documents still classified as ‘defence secrets’ could help. It is time France looks at its history in the eye,” Gauthier said. 

During an earlier quest, in May, Survie, LDH, and FIDH cited several politicians and political parties, including Europe Ecologie-Les verts (EELV), a green political party in France, which has also called for a total lifting of secrecy. 

Debate

Gauthier said he will also attend a related event at the French Senate in Paris on Monday, a session which, among others, will host a debate between the French humanitarian activist and former health minister, Bernard Kouchner, and François Leotard, the defence minister from 1993 to 1995.

"It isn’t certain whether this debate may allow a part of the truth to emerge. What can Francois Leotard reveal”? he pondered. 

Last weekend, Survie’s secretary-general Ophélie Latil published an article in which she probed issues regarding, among others, Opération Turquoise, a French-led military operation launched in Rwanda by then French president François Mitterrand in 1994 under a UN mandate. 

"When 2,500 heavily-armed French soldiers prepared to intervene in Rwanda from June 22, 1994, the reason often given and always put forward by the French leaders was to save innocent people through a humanitarian intervention,” Latil wrote. 

Ignoring slaughter

The most intense massacres had already taken place in April and May, Latil says, and French authorities knew but ignored what was going on after April 7.  

She said French troops engaged in another operation, Amaryllis, in April to evacuate Europeans but did not care to help end the slaughter in Kigali. 

On Wednesday, Survie lawyer Eric Plouvier was quoted by the French news agency AFP, as saying the demand for truth, 20 years after what happened, must take precedence over the need for secrecy. 

According to AFP, in a message to the French armed forces in April, Minister Le Drian defended the "exemplary transparency” of his administration by declassifying more than 1,100 documents. The French NGOs, however, say that the transparency was "far from complete.”

This comes as a delegation of French youth leaders and their European colleagues are now in the country for a weeklong tour over the same issue.

On Wednesday, they reiterated the need for the truth on the role played by some French leaders in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.  

After touring Murambi memorial site in Nyamagabe District, where 50,000 Tutsi were killed, Benjamin Abtan, the head the European Grassroots Antiracist Movement, said it was regrettable that individuals within France’s leadership were involved in the Genocide but continue to remain silent. 

"What is important for us, the people of France, is to make sure that these individuals answer for their acts before the public, and why not before justice?” Abtan wondered.