Editor,

RE: "France should face the truth and stop mudslinging” (The New Times, October 13). Where the Genocide against the Tutsi is concerned, France cannot afford to face the truth and stop mudslinging. The country’s establishment is inextricably locked into a logic of stonewalling and deflection because the alternative ties them forever into an unbreakable embrace of Rwandan génocidaires as their co-conspirators.

Admitting to this painful truth puts paid to France’s conceited self-description as the cradle and defender of global human rights. They just can’t imagine having to stop from this fake pose. Expecting them to change and acknowledge their role in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi rather than invest their energy in rubbishing the heavy and well-documented accusations about that role is to ignore the pathological nature of the kind of power and racism that would make them feel there was nothing wrong with involving their country in the monstrous crime of genocide in the first place.

Their view remains that of François Mitterrand, their president at the time of the Genocide, whose sociopathic view of the murder of more than a million women, men and children in just a 100 days in 1994 will forever remain emblematic of France’s racism: ‘In such countries, genocide is not too important.’

What exacerbates the effect of that racism is that no one in France, from among its allies or the wider global community, including the UN (those who are usually so prompt to lecture us on human rights), found anything to say about such a sociopathic statement.

And so, by all means keep France’s feet on the fire of shame for their criminal complicity in the Genocide. Just don’t bother asking them to acknowledge that role, apologise for it and seek forgiveness. They do not see you as deserving of such human consideration.

Mwene Kalinda