‘During the Gacaca courts – the community tribunals that were created to try genocide perpetrators – when a person did not want to confess, they picked a know génocidaire in the area, and placed their own killings on his head, after all, what’s one, two or three more victims to a person already convicted of killing 30 and sentenced to life in prison. Neither their fate nor their sentence would be affected.
In the same vein, the so called French media revelations that ‘Bagosora & co’ are the masterminds behind the downing of president Habyarimana’s aircraft, an act that is believed to have triggered the genocide on a wider scale than in the previous years, is just a contre-feu, voluntarily or involuntarily staged between the French intelligence and the French media, calculated to extract the French government from the assassination and shift all the blame to ‘blacks’, 100% Rwandan extremists, dead or in prison.
The article quotes a ‘confidential cable’ of the French intelligence agency, DGSE, informing their superiors that the ‘Hutu extremists’ led by Bagosora, are the likely authors of the assassination. For all practical purposes, that cable is a lie.
This is what we know:
In her book ‘A People Betrayed: The role of the West in the Rwandan Genocide’, British author Linda Melvern captures an issue of Kangura newspaper with a full-page photo of François Mitterrand saying: ‘Great friends, they stand by you in difficult times’ (Article no.6, December 1990):
- From 1990-1994, the DGSE and its armed wing (the 11th shock paratrooper’s regiment) provided military intelligence and direct support to the Rwandan army. It is worth noting that Colonel Didier Tauzin (former employee of DGSE) was a military advisor to President Habyarimana;
- We know that during the genocide, French officials (diplomats and senior military officers) were involved, either as direct perpetrators or accomplices. After organizing, training and arming the FAR, France fought by their side and French soldiers were seen stopping Tutsi at roadblocks in Kigali handing them over to militias.
- We know that even the ‘Hutu extremists’ were partly created and supported by the French government. After the creation of the CDR (openly advocating for a total ethnic cleansing), its leader Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza received a congratulatory message from President Mitterrand through Bruno Delaye. Journalist Colette Braeckman reported off the record conversations with French officials in Arusha, boasting about the creation of “Hutu Power” coalition around the CDR.
- We know that French elements were with Habyarimana’s Republican Guards at Kanombe airport at the time of bringing down the aircraft.
- We also know that French Tour Controllers present at the Kanombe airport who overheard and witnessed the downing of the aircraft, were mysteriously assassinated in the immediate aftermath of the attack and their families back in France prevented from asking questions by the French government;
- We also know that the French government used its position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council to push for the withdrawal of UN troops in Rwanda to undermine their commander Romeo Dallaire’s capacity to stop the genocide;
- We know that the French dispatched troops to stop the advancing of the Rwandan Patriotic Army, first as a combatant force and later under a ‘humanitarian’ cover – the Operation Turquoise, to create a safe heaven where killings of Tutsi would continue, then exfiltrate the militias to DRC and offer safe heaven in the west to members of the Akazu;
- We know that the French government continued to arm and pay salaries of génocidaires from their Congolese camps much after they had perpetrated the genocide, with hope that they would reconquer Rwanda.
- We are aware of the Murambi Camp cruelty, when French soldiers set-up a volley-ball pitch on top of a mass grave to dissimulate fresh killings by militias from UN;
- We finally have heard testimonies of Tutsi women who were raped by French soldiers.
We know that and more, no thanks to the DGSE or to the French mainstream media.
The truth, which will never go away is that without the French government, there wouldn’t have been a Genocide against the Tutsi as the world knows it today.
There are sounder, corroborating evidence by far more credible researchers, Rwandans and Frenchs alike, which demonstrate a clear cooperation before, during and after the genocide between the ‘Akazu’ – the inner circle of the power, the French executive office (presidency), French intelligence and French mercenaries – to date mind you.
Independent inquiries, both by Rwandan and French researchers have accused the French intelligence and the Hutu extremists as the two assassins of Habyarimana; having found out, among other reasons, his intent to implement the Arusha peace accords and share power with the RPF. Rwanda’s ‘Mucyo commission’, ‘Mutsinzi Commission’, French Benoît Collombat, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Guillaume Ancel, etc.
There is even more evidence of cooperation between the same French intelligence, French presidency and a French judge, one Jean-Louis Brugière, to make up sham allegations and indict RPF leaders for downing the same plane. Only yesterday was French media happy to propagate the scenario that the RPF was behind the shooting down of the plane. After the RPF theory was dismissed, ridiculed and the French mascarade case closed, now they adopt the line of Hutu-extremists. Where is the elephant in the room?
Here it is: Some French authors have stopped short of accusing the entire French government and prefer to isolate François Mitterrand, then French president, his chief of staff Hubert Vedrine, some French mercenaries, the DGSE, etc. That too is a misnomer: Unless there was an impeachment process initiated against Mitterand by other French institutions during his participation in the genocide against the Tutsi, or even a Gilets-Jaune-type movement clamoring an end to Genocide against the Tutsi, both which I don’t know about; Mitterrand was not the Godfather of a mafia, he was the elected French head of state. A clique working under him is not less the French government than a clique under Hitler was the German government.
In fact, I have reasons to believe that just last year, Rwanda was getting ready to submit to international jurisdictions a well documented indictment list of French officials and mercenaries, eventually accompanied with international arrest warrants. That document has been frozen for ‘raison d’État’, but it hasn’t gone away…
The Rwandan and French governments seem to be on a truce. But as we get ready to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi, a misinformation of the kind of DGSE and France-Inter is simply unacceptable. It is not only an insult to our intelligence, the memory of victims, it is also cynical to survivor who lost everything in the genocide.
A truce is fine, but the French should not kid themselves, thinking that we are now in the same camp of the accuser, with a common enemy – the ‘Hutu extremists’; we are most certainly not!
Until the day they officially admit the responsibility of France in the preparation, triggering, perpetration, sponsorship and cover-up of the genocide against the Tutsi – and after, we are not in the same camp;
Until some French politicians and military officers are put to trial for crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity, we are not in the same camp;
Don’t mind about reparations, for there is nothing, no money, half-hearted speeches, photo opportunities, hefty positions in international organization, much less smokescreen articles in the media, that will bring us our one million people back. Nothing at all.
Other than that, by all means, keep the revelations coming, as far as I am concerned this is an affair of two killers starting to talk and turning against one another. If I was Bagosora, I would also start making revelations about the French government; that’s right, in matters of Genocide against the Tutsi, the word of the DGSE or that of French media is as credible as that of a convicted génocidaire, sentenced to life in prison.