Relations between Rwanda and France have hit rock bottom in the past few days. This was not unexpected. One of the immediate causes for relations turning frosty is French Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere’s recent issuing of arrest warrants for nine senior Rwandan military officers and his calls for Rwandan President Paul Kagame to face trial for the downing of President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane on April 6 1994.
The case has revived intense enmity between France and her former bosom buddy, Rwanda. The Rwandan government has long said that France armed, trained and gave orders to those who carried out the genocide in 1994.
In a recent interview Kagame recalled how in 1994 local and international media reported on plans to assassinate Habyarimana from within his own camp and accused French soldiers and Habyarimana’s presidential guards of preventing United Nations forces from accessing the crash site as part of their inquiry. ”All this is put aside and the blame is apportioned to the RPF [Rwandan Patriotic Front, the rebel movement led by Kagame]. The French know who shot down the plane. It must be them who are responsible,” Kagame said.
Rwanda has consistently accused Agathe Habyarimana, the wife of the late president, and the founder of the ”Akazu”, a small but powerful circle of Hutu family members and relatives who plotted to exterminate the Tutsi, of being responsible for Habyarimana’s death. Rwanda has always wanted the former first lady to face justice over the genocide. However, she is protected by the French authorities and lives somewhere in France. ”They [France] are harbouring Agathe Habyarimana whose evidence is being used by the judge and yet she is a killer,” Kagame has said since the verdict was handed down, adding that other former Habyarimana government officials have also sought refuge in France.
A recent statement issued by the Rwandan ministry of justice to the Secretary General of Interpol, Ronald Noble, states that ”the French military manned roadblocks, checked ethnic identity cards to separate those to be killed and fought alongside the former government forces”. The letter wonders how the French judge could use ”gossip and rumours obtained from genocide suspects; common criminals and Rwandan political dissidents as a basis to issue indictments against government officials of a sovereign state”.
In the meantime, in Rwanda, the French judge’s actions appear to be uniting Rwandans against the French government, as recent demonstrations have shown. More than 25 000 Rwandans from all walks of life marched through the streets of Kigali, the capital city, with placards that condemned the French and their involvement in Rwanda before and during the 1994 genocide. As one observer in Kigali has said, ”The demonstration has been a combination of Hutus and Tutsis and not just the genocide survivors.”
The majority of Rwandans feel that the international community, and particularly the Western world, turned a blind eye to the horrific killings of 1994 which targeted Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus. As one genocide survivor in Kigali commented during the demonstrations. ”It is not a secret that had the French not been here, a genocide probably would not have occurred. Now how does the world just keep silent as the French try to destroy again what we have built?”
It has been speculated in Kigali that the Rwandan government’s recent establishment of a commission of inquiry into the role of France in the 1994 genocide could have infuriated the French. The resulting anger and panic among the French political class and leadership could have resulted in an indirect retaliation from the judge. The other fear could be that the results of the Rwandan investigation could lead to legal action before the International Court of Justice.
It seems doubtful that the French government anticipated the astoundingly swift reaction of the Rwandan government to the allegations. The Rwandan government’s immediate recall of Rwanda’s ambassador to France and its closure of the French embassy in Kigali, as well as the shutting down of all French activities, including humanitarian, in the country must have taken the French by surprise.
There is also a school of thought that says that, when all is said and done, the French authorities are reacting to the one thing that they never wanted to happen in Rwanda: the establishment of a government with a leadership that is English-speaking, and whose mandate is not blessed by the French authorities.
Oskar Kimanuka is a social and economic commentator from Rwanda. He writes a regular column in The East African newspaper