This time last year I was in Rwanda. During my visit I went to the Murambi Genocide Memorial, where 50,000 people where slaughtered. Many in Rwanda laid the blame for this at the feet of the French. Rob Halfon, who is there at the moment has written an incredibly moving report of his visit this week HERE. Below is a fifteen minute film I made for 18 Doughty Street about the Rwandan genocide.
Online Videos by Veoh.com
Johann Hari has extracts of an article he has written outlining the shameful betrayal of Rwanda by the French government. The Rwandans are understandably engaged in a process of 'defrancification'. French is no longer being taught to schoolchildren and is being replaced by English, which is now an offical language. The legal system is gradually changing from one based on French law to a more English style arrangement.
There is only one way France can restore its reputation in this part of Africa. President Sarkozy should visit Kigali and formally apologise for France's part in the genocide which killed more than a million people in just a few short weeks.
The BBC report is HERE. Jeremy Hunt has also blogged on Rwanda HERE.
18 comments:
Wasn't it the Tories who refused to do anything when the Genocide was going on?
Please read the whole report (I haven't - it is weekend reading), BUT ALSO the 1999 UN Rapporteur's report for Rwanda 1994, before you indulge in Anglo-Saxon slagging-off of of the French.
This kind nof issue seems good for shoot-from-the-hip blogging, but...
The incumbant President of Rwanda - who may or may not himself be reasonably accused of being a war criminal - has 'history' with the French; hence his country 'independent' report perhaps.
Furthermore, as the UK Basra expeditionary force was yesterday exposed in the London Times: sometimes field commander's operational judgments in the heat of the situation, stand up poorly to retropection. Goes with the territory.
Not to mention, of course, that a few 'bad apples' in Abu Ghraib is not a benchmark of national intent
But if you are comfortable with Victors-in-civil-war reports, I have no doubt you'll be the first to recommend the UK tax surcharge, maybe circa 2020 or so, for the Iraqi sovreign reparations demanded, one might hazard, by the Shi'ite government of the day...
...This is a mine-field (apologies for the term) area for instant-reaction-blogging.
Being blindly anti-French puts one, sightlessly, amongst the rapidly anti-Americans.
Red Exile, your second idiotic comment of the day. Having been there and read widely on the subject, perhaps you might just consider that I have written about this with some perspective and knowledge. Clearly unlike yourself.
I am not at all anti French. But they have questions to answer on this and yet show no sign of being willing to do so.
Please blame the African machete wielders for the genocide and stop looking for excuses.
Anon @ 11.30pm - maybe you will stop for a moment and ask yourself where the machetes came from? Maybe you will even consider trivia such as why Tutsis were directed by French troops towards Hutu positions?
Iain, I am not sure French pride will allow them to apologise for the role they appear to have played, especially after Jean-Louis Bruguière indicted Kagame to deflect attention of French actions in 1994.
Ian, there's a slight mistake in your report. Hari gives an extract from his own report on the genocide, not the Rwandan report.
Never any point in delay when it comes to slagging off the frogs. The sooner they get out of Calais the better.
You have to ask yourself if this is true why there are no charges for French political leaders from the Hague?
Anyone who knows anything about IndoChina and Napoleonic history, knows that the French are not averse to a bit of genocide or at least being a part of or culpable for it.
And yes anon, the Tories could have single-handedly stopped the genocide.
Facing up to truth does not make you anti-French.mdcakgf
Jeremy Hunt has blogged about the long term aftermath of the genocide. It's a very good post that everyone should read:
http://www.jeremyhunt.org/blog.asp?id=115&type=32
So it's all the fault of the French is it?
Amazing what a brief visit to the scene of an appalling crime can do to one's critical faculties.
For your information:
Paul Kagame is fairly typical of (ex?) terrorist group leaders, trained armed and sponsored by the US, that have subsequently - with the appropriate US nods, winks and guarantees - seized political power by force of arms. If you think that Kagame's RPF is not itself responsible for some of the most heinous crimes in Rwanda, then frankly you are delusional.
On February 6, 2008, a Spanish court delivered international arrest warrants against forty of the top military officials in the Rwandan regime. Kagame was investigated but not indicted but only because heads of state have immunity. The arrest warrants charge the RPF officials with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1990 and 2002.
It was a US made missile that brought down the plane carrying the Presidents of both Rwanda and Burundi in 1994 in a scrupulously planned assassination that sparked the entire subsequent tragedy. French anti-terrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, concluded in November 2006 that the RPF, under the direct orders of Paul Kagame, carried out that surface-to air-missile attack.
Sabretache is right about what started the fighting.
The governing tribe then took out their rage in what the BBC describes, when talking about murders by people we support like our police (formerly the KLA) in Kosovo as "revenge".
The people who fired that missile, while officially unidentified, are almost certainly the current government.
The difficulty is not looking for villains to pin it on but looking for anybody not guilty.
Iain, I heartily recommend the book 'Collapse' by Jared Diamond. The French may have been a factor but I think Prof Diamond shows the main causes had nothing to do with them whatsoever.
The book is only about the Rwandan disaster in part; it focuses on societal collapse throughout the ages and which factors turn out to be common to many of them. Really a most informative book.
That the present Rwandan government is 'defrenchifying' surely speaks volumes as to who is perceived in Rwanda as culpable.
The Rwandans are the only guilty party, no-one else, because it is they who did the killing.
As for the argument that the genocide could have been stopped -- well, for how long?
Stuff like that is prevented many years before it occurs, and as always, when a country is not culturally homogeneous, civil war is on the cards eventually when those populations don't integrate and as the next step, melt into one cultural group.
---
For those of you who speak German, here is a gem from 1869 on Librivox, the book 'Im Herzen von Afrika' -- the report of a long expedition by an eminent German scientist of that age to gather botanical materials, which has great stories of the tribes and the Mohamedan slave dealers who take this guy around Africa into dangerous and remote places to explore for science, because the then King of Egypt made the traders personally responsible for his welfare and success. Enjoy: http://librivox.org/im-herzen-von-afrika-by-georg-schweinfurth/
Roy Halfon!!
AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA
AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA
I would just add that President Sarkozy did visit Kigali in December, and announced a 'beginning of normalisation' in diplomatic relations, following their breakdown in 2006. This was followed by a visit by the Foreign Affairs Minister in January. No apology though, and the report was undermined before publication, with the accusations deemed 'unacceptable' by a spokesperson.
These proxy wars between post-colonial powers, like Zimbabwe and Sudan which involve the UK more closely, involve only a small number of Africans as participants, and many, many more as victims.
The Tory position on this is less interesting tha their position on African nations where there is still a significant British investment. Any thoughts?
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