On Tuesday this week, the government of Rwanda formally accused senior French officials of involvement in 1994 genocide, which left about one million Tutsis dead. The report of a commission of inquiry had been set up by the government to establish the French government’s complicity in the genocide and has implicated the superpower of directly participating in the horrendous genocide. Before the probe commission was set up, Genocide survivors had repeatedly accused Paris of covering up its role in training troops and militia who carried out massacres against and of propping up the ethnic Hutu. And among those named in the 500-page report was the late President Francois Mitterrand. The report also implicated the then French Prime Minister, Edouard Balladur, and two later prime ministers – Alain Juppé and Dominique de Villepin – of political, military, diplomatic and logistic support for the Hutu regime which carried out the systematic slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis. Attached to the report was a list of 33 accused French political and military officials. ‘The French support was of a political, military, diplomatic and logistic nature,” the report said. “Considering the gravity of the alleged facts, the Rwandan government asks competent authorities to undertake all necessary actions to bring the accused French political and military leaders to answer for their acts before justice.” The French also launched a UN-approved, military-humanitarian operation, whose main achievement was to protect many Hutu leaders from the advancing Rwandese Patriotic Front/Army(RPF). Like it has been always the case, France denies the responsibility and says its forces helped protect people during a UN-sanctioned mission in Rwanda at the time!But unlike the Genocide victims, French officials implicated will have enough time perhaps to defend themselves before the court. When French government finally reacts, I hope it will force those the Mucyo Commission implicated in the killings in to court. They will then get competent lawyers with reputable background to defend them and perhaps escape the gallows! All law-abiding states should stand tall and hunt down these officials implicated until they stand in the dock at The Hague in The Netherlands. ssuuna2000@yahoo.co.uk
