A team of French researchers and historians last week handed their findings to President Emmanuel Macron having concluded their two-year assignment that started in April 2019, which was to establish the role of their country in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

The 1,200 report that was compiled by the team led by famous French historian Prof. Vincent Duclert concluded that France bears heavy and overwhelming responsibility over the 1994 Genocide in which over a million people died.

However, the experts make no mention of the complicity by the French government of the time, which has left many in civil society and groups associated with survivors of the Genocide guarded on welcoming the report.

The report does not also mention the role of the French troops deployed in Rwanda under Operation Tourqouise, which under the guise of a humanitarian mission, ended up providing an escape corridor for the killers as they fled into DR Congo, armed to the teeth.

The trepidation by survivors is well founded, especially given that the glaring role that French authorities at the time had in the massacres has been well documented in works of various commissions, including the Mucyo Commission whose report was published in 2008.

Despite this however, it is important to look at the Duclert Commission’s as the beginning of a long journey that will hopefully yield good results. Like was said by government in their statement following the release of the report, this represents an important step towards a common understanding of France’s role in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

It is a process.

However, like every journey, the step should be taking us towards the desired destination, and that will require an extra effort by the French authorities.

The Macron government can start by doing what is within their powers; and that is acting onto the indictments issued by the National Public Prosecution Authority against some 47 genocide fugitives known to be living in France.

Some of these fugitives have been arrested and then released on frivolous grounds by French courts.

A case in point is a decision by Cour de Cassation in 2014 which denied the extradition to Rwanda of three notorious genocide masterminds including Col Laurent Serubuga, on grounds that during the Genocide in 1994, Genocide had not been defined as a crime in Rwandan laws.

On that account, these mass murderers were let off and are up to now scot-free. This is a travesty of justice.

It is therefore imperative that France start by correcting these historical mistakes by putting these fugitives to justice and this will lift the hopes of survivors who have waited for that justice to prevail for now 27 years.

In the Duclert Commission report therefore, cautious optimism wouldn’t be out of order.