Why French judiciary will never go after genocidaires

Editor, Allow me to react to the Editorial, “The French judiciary should know that nothing will shake genocide survivors” (The New Times, April 5). Are we really surprised that a central establishment pillar—the judiciary—of a state, France, that was fully complicit in the Genocide against Rwanda’s Tutsi, would do everything possible to shield their allies and protégés against having to account for actions for which they themselves are equally guilty, at least as an accessory? Let us not be naive; the French establishment remains bitter and revanchist today at their failure to keep or return their génocidaire allies in power in Kigali. The way they have used their courts at home to protect the likes of Claude Muhayimana, a notorious murderer, from ever being tried for their crimes is the same way they have used the UN (through their control of the so-called Peacekeeping Department and their role as pen-holder—i.e. initiator of resolutions—in the UN Security Council on issues related to peace and security the Great Lakes region of Africa) to ensure there is never any really effective action against their FDLR protégés. After all, let us remember, unbelievably, the very Frenchman who got the UN Security Council in 1994 to give France UN cover to undertake Opération Turquoise (would have been better named as “Opération Dunkerque pour nos allies le gouvernement interimaire”) is the same man who currently and for some years now has headed the huge UN bureaucracy responsible for taking or frustrating action against the FDLR in eastern DRC, where he helped implant them. If this was a movie plot, the coincidence would be so blatant unbelievable that the scriptwriter would be laughed out of the producer’s office. In brief, why would we be surprised that the French have been giving the very few génocidaires they have bothered to bring before their courts, from the hundreds on their territory who are even never disturbed, these get-out-of-jail free cards? These people, as well as those that have transformed eastern DR Congo into hell on earth for its population, remain very close French allies in good standing, no matter any attempt to pretend otherwise. Mwene Kalinda ****************** That’s guilty conscious syndrome behaviour. France will never, ever, forget the defeat of 1990-1994, and the Armageddon of 1997 when they hid behind refugee camps in DR Congo preparing to attack Rwanda. They were reduced in rubbles, unexpectedly. They can keep playing their political childish game, but in the end, they’ll come to realise that an orange is not an apple, and never will be. Abdul-Rahman Ntaganda

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Why French judiciary will never go after genocidaires