Report: France 'bears significant responsibility' for Rwandan genocide

By Alyssa Wilson Published: April 20, 2021

Report: France ‘bears significant responsibility’ for Rwandan genocide

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France was aware of the genocide happening in 1994 and they bear significant responsibility, according to a new report published by the Rwandan government,

During that period of time in Rwanda, members of the Hutu majority murdered up to 800,000 people, most of the Tutsi minority.

Earlier this month, the archives with information from 1990-1994 were made freely accessible in an effort to understand France’s role in the violence.

After the creation of the commission, French President Emmanuel Macron said the country must look at the past without concealing it.

“We owe it to ourselves to look at our past in its entirety, without any desire to conceal or self-flagellate,” he told The Africa Report.

The 628-page report, titled A Foreseeable Genocide: The Role of the French Government in Connection with the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, was drafted by Robert F. Muse and Washington D.C. law firm Levy Firestone Muse LLP.

“A Foreseeable Genocide: The Role of the French Government in Connection with the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda”, the final report of the Muse Investigation, was submitted to the Government of Rwanda on 19 April 2021. Download here: https://t.co/HPI0pdW8e1

— Government of Rwanda (@RwandaGov) April 19, 2021

The French commission that studied the country’s involvement cleared France of complicity in the events, CNN reported.

According to the Rwandan report, “the Government of France bears significant responsibility for having enabled a foreseeable genocide.” It also says France was not blind to the killings.

“From its knowledge of massacres of civilians conducted by the government and its allies to the daily dehumanization of the Tutsi, to the cables and other data arriving from Rwanda, the French government could see that a genocide was coming. The French government was neither blind nor unconscious about the foreseeable genocide.”

The report also alleges that France not only knew about the killings but that they also covered it up.