Concealing Genocide archives is a ploy by France to feign innocence

Editor, RE: “Why France will never declassify documents related to ‘94 Genocide” (The New Times, September 22). Of course there is nothing secret at all about France’s active role in abetting the genocidaires before, during and since the cataclysmic attempt to completely wipe Rwanda’s Tutsi off the face of the earth. But, given the world we live in, as long as the French keep their archives of that role under seal and publicly inaccessible, they can continue to claim implausible innocence and their Western allies, their media and many of their bought academics will be able to pretend that those claims are credible, despite overwhelming evidence already in the public domain that they thoroughly compromised with the genocidaires at the highest levels. Yes indeed, let us support the work of Ibuka-France chapter and many French citizens and other people of conscience who continue to pressurize the French government to open their archives related to their predecessor governments’ role in the Genocide against the Tutsi. There is value in keeping their feet on the fire. Even if they continue to stonewall and obstinately refuse to open them up to public or academic consultation, that very refusal is all but a confession that they cannot afford to allow their own record of their role in the genocide to become public; in other words, that they have a lot to hide—proof of guilt, if any were needed. Rwandans know exactly what the French did to support the genocidaires in their planning and preparations for the “Apocalypse”, to carry it out, and then to help re-arm, train and re-organize from the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Zaire) to return to the place of their crime to finish the ‘job’, and once they had become routed, to ex-filtrate them to safety, including to France and many of their allies countries across the world. Rwandans know, and so do the French authorities as well as everybody else, despite their patent pretense to the contrary—and now and then even engage in crude revisionism. That truth fortifies us, and informs our determination never to again allow foreigners to control our affairs and our destiny. Our experience of Western collusion with the French to let them abet the genocide against our people, and then to further collude with France’s attempts to turn historical reality on its head in order to impeach the victims while whitewashing their “Hutu Power” allies and themselves of supreme crime of genocide, reminds us of that Western countries will always gang against you in defense of a fellow Western country, even when they fully know of its guilt. That reality should inform those of our fellow Rwandans, who sometimes give the impression they are mere echo-chambers of Western Establishment opinion vis-à-vis Rwanda’s determination to never again be anybody else’s plaything—if indeed they really have their country’s best interest at heart—that the defense of their country against those who would like to return us under the thumb of foreign domination, is the sacred duty of each and every one of us. We paid an incredibly dear price to free ourselves from foreign control. Failing to do our bit to safeguard that freedom would be a betrayal of all who made the supreme sacrifice so that we could be free as well as the more than a million of our innocent compatriots who were exterminated by the local allies of those who were determined that we must never emancipate our country from their pre-carre. Mwene Kalinda

Opinions

Concealing Genocide archives is a ploy by France to feign innocence