French and Rwandan activists have criticised a rare debate in France’s senate on Monday which they say fell short of bringing out Paris’ role in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

This was during a forum organised by the RBF-France-Forum de la Memoire (Remembrance Forum), a French civil society group whose members were in the country in April, this year, to pay tribute to Genocide survivors.

The forum titled; "Rwanda: Reflections on the last Genocide of the 20th century,” had panelists including French humanitarian activist and former foreign minister Bernard Kouchner and François Leotard, who was the French defence minister from 1993 to 1995.

"We expected a lot from the  debate,” Alain Gauthier, the head of the rights group, Collectif des Parties Civiles pour le Rwanda (CPCR), told The New Times yesterday.

Gauthier said that during the debate, Leotard said he was proud of Operation Turquoise, a French-led military operation launched in Rwanda by then French president François Mitterrand on June 22, 1994, and that France had no apologies to make for its role in Rwanda two decades ago.

Kouchner only acknowledged "a political mistake” on behalf of his country and both politicians concurred that there was no complicity on behalf of their government in the events that led to the killings.

"Personally, I am not disappointed because that is what  I expected. Both politicians agreed to request the declassification of "secret” documents but this is what we asked for in an earlier petition,” said Gauthier, whose organisation is behind several arrests of Genocide fugitives holed up in France.

On Saturday, several French rights groups petitioned Jean-Yves Le Drian, the current French minister for defence over the declassification of the "secret documents” concerning the role of the French government in the 1994 Genocide.

 The groups want the French establishment to come clean on the exact activities of several French military operations launched in Rwanda during and after the 1994 Genocide, including Operation Turquoise, a 2,500-strong mission with heavily armed French soldiers who deployed in Rwanda in June 1994.

The troops were deployed under the pretext of humanitarian intervention but are believed to have instead created an escape corridor for the Genocide mastermind, as the former government was being overrun by the RPA forces.

Rewriting history

Rwandan genocide scholar Tom Ndahiro, said historical facts will remain irrespective of whatever happens in French circles.

"No matter how diversionary the debate may be, it can never  turn tables against the truth,” Ndahiro said.

Ndahiro likens Leotard to a denier, especially with respect to Operation Turquoise, which the scholar said was "a mission that came to the rescue of the genocidaires.”

During the Genocide, as co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), Kouchner often travelled to Rwanda, and Dr Jean-Hervé Bradol, the MSF’s Rwanda Programme Manager during the Genocide has previously hinted at France’s complicity.

Current and former top French leaders, including then President François Mitterrand, insisted that whatever happened was based on a ‘normal’ bilateral defence pact with the then Rwandan regime.

"This pact cannot be justification for Genocide,” Ndahiro said. He says there is ample and documented evidence of France’s complicity in the 1994 Genocide.

During the Genocide, the scholar said French military advisors were in Kigali and were involved – at the highest level – in "creating the military doctrine” of the day.

They include Lt. Col. Jacques Chollet, who served as President Juvenal Habyarimana’s advisor, and Lt. Col. Denis Roux, who trained the presidential guard.

Ndahiro said: " They, for example, defined the enemy in a methodical manner and circulated documents to all units, indicating that the enemy was a Tutsi, inside and outside the country.”

A Tutsi were therefore supposed to be fought with all means possible,” Ndahiro said.