France Continues To Deny Any Role In Rwanda Massacre

by Julio Godoy

(IPS) PARIS -- France is continuing to deny that it backed the Hutu-dominated Rwandan army blamed for the massacre of some 800,000 people ten years ago this month.

Former minister for foreign affairs Dominique de Villepin claimed three weeks ago that "French intervention in Rwanda saved hundreds of thousands of lives."

But the new Rwandan leader Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, contradicted De Villepin. "Yes, the French saved many lives -- of those who committed the genocide," he said.

De Villepin was referring to Operation Turquoise, a peacekeeping mission launched by the French government with UN authorization on June 23, 1994 -- when the genocide was mostly over.

Some experts who have studied the event say Kagame is right. Operation Turquoise, they say, helped Hutu authorities who led the massacres to flee Rwanda and seek refuge in neighbouring Zaire, then controlled by another Francophile dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko.

France has important economic interests in Rwanda and has been involved in the country's politics for many years before the civil war that peaked in the spring of 1994.

Rwandan dictator Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, had enjoyed strong French and Belgian military support since the late 1980s despite strong evidence that Hutu militias linked to the Rwandan army (FAR, after its French name) had been massacring opposition leaders, especially Tutsis.

FAR had been fighting back the guerrilla rebellion of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR) led by exiled Tutsis, including now president Paul Kagame. The exiles were based in Uganda.

Rwanda, a small country of barely 24,000 square kilometres, is located at the centre of the Great Lakes region, bordering Uganda, Tanzania, the former Zaire, and Burundi. Hutus are about 80 percent of a population of some eight million. The Tutsi community forms most of the rest.

Tutsis were being massacred since 1990, but the major genocide began after the aircraft carrying Habyarimana was brought down on April 6, 1994. The Rwandan dictator was returning from peace negotiations in Arusha in neighbouring Tanzania.

Tutsi rebels were blamed for the killing of Habyarimana. In retaliation the Hutu-controlled army and militias led waves of massacres of Tutsis, but also of moderate Hutus.

The Hutu militias killed up to 800,000 people over the following three months, according to United Nations reports.

Classified documents and testimonies from international observers confirm that the French government knew of Hutu plans to carry out the massacres.

French military officers posted with the Rwandan army in their headquarters "necessarily knew what was going on in the Rwanda military structures, they were fully informed that massacres were in preparation," says Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general who headed the UN mission sent to Rwanda in 1993.

French journalist Patrick de Saint-Exupery, author of a book on the Rwandan genocide, confirms Dallaire's accusations against French military advisers.

"French military officers trained the killers in the genocide," De Saint-Exupery says in his book 'L'Inavouable - La France in Ruanda' (The unspeakable - France in Rwanda). "They did that on orders, by teaching the Rwandan army counter-insurgency strategies and tactics."

Dallaire believes that French officers even participated in skirmishes between the Rwandan army and the guerrillas. "In the days that followed the killing of Habyarimana, we saw Europeans soldiers wearing the Rwandan military uniform, taking part in manoeuvres," he had said in a statement made following the massacres.

These European soldiers, apparently French nationals, later joined Operation Turquoise. By then most of the massacres had taken place, and the operation served only to protect fleeing Hutu leaders.

A report by a group of independent observers said state-owned French banks delivered about six million dollars to the Hutu army and militias at the time.

All this information has been publicly known for years, but France has refused to accept any responsibility for the Rwandan genocide. A parliamentary assessment of French intervention in Rwanda published in 1998 spoke only of "institutional dysfunctions" in French aid to the Rwandan army, and called the French policy in Rwanda "a strategic error."

But Pierre Banner who headed the parliamentary commission admits now that France was heavily involved in leading the Rwandan army. "We did support a racist army, and didn't take the necessary distance at the moment of the genocide. I think France would do a good thing in accepting its responsibility."