Kwibuka21: French youth return to Rwanda

Twenty-five French youth leaders returned to the country at the weekend to join Rwandans in commemorating the 21st anniversary of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, due to start tomorrow. The youth, who were last in the country in June, last year, have shown more determination to denounce their government’s alleged role in the Genocide in which more than a million people were killed. Their leader, Benjamin Abtan, the head of the European Grassroots Antiracist Movement (Egam), an umbrella of youth wings of political organisations and students’ unions, yesterday told The New Times that they were intent on taking their crusade a level higher. “We want to see how to extend and deepen our work against Genocide denial and we are also launching a new call in the context of pushing for truth to be told,” Abtan said, referring to an open letter the group has written to French President François Hollande, slamming what they call his double standards when it comes to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. “We now hope to get more people to speak and put more pressure on our government and Genocide deniers,” Abtan said. As they returned home after a week-long visit, last June, the delegation pledged to step up their campaign to expose and denounce France’s role in the 1994 Genocide and promised to mobilise other Europeans to join the fight against Genocide denial. “We now have more politicians such as Members of Parliament in our group and we are steadily moving forward,” Abtan said of their achievements. “We have MPs who want the truth made public and this is very new and positive for us. We have more intellectuals, artists and others now ready to speak about the 1994 Genocide.” In the letter, they note that the French leader will not be in Rwanda to commemorate with Rwandans during this coming 21st Genocide commemoration period yet, on January 27, the day of the commemorations of the Holocaust and of the Roma genocide, he was at the Memorial of the Shoah, and then by the site of the camp of Auschwitz. On April 24, their letter stresses, the day of the 100th commemoration of the Armenian genocide, Hollande plans to be in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. “April 7, the day of the commemorations of the Genocide against the Tutsi in 1994, which left a million people dead between April and July, you will not be present. You will not speak about the truth,” reads part of their letter. ‘Persistent silence’ The youth state that silence, for the past 21 years, has persisted in the official French discourse; a silence that led to the cancelation of the official representation of France at the 20th anniversary of the Genocide last year. “Mr President, why such different approaches concerning these genocides, these crimes against humanity that by definition, concern all of us? Why the silence? It is this silence and not the enunciation of the historic truth that dishonors our country,” they wrote. Last June, Abtan was mindful of the fact that the challenge they would face is enormous due to the fact that people with ties to the former genocidal regime in Rwanda are still living “and still influential.” France is also home to many Rwandan Genocide fugitives. Among other things, the youth vowed they would not stop mobilising people such that Genocide is acknowledged and commemorated in France, as well as persist in sensitising the French and international public opinion on the question of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. The group’s activities are shored up by more people, from France and other parts of Europe, including Bernard Kouchner, France’s former foreign affairs minister; Noël Mamère; mayor of Bègles; and Richard Prasquier, vice-president of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah, as well as a number of other politicians, artists, writers and historians. They have also enlisted the support of Guillaume Ancel, former soldier involved in the ‘Opération Turquoise’, a French-led military operation in Rwanda in 1994. editorial@newtimes.co.rw

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Kwibuka21: French youth return to Rwanda