France needs to admit role in 1994 genocide: Rwanda

A Rwandan girl visits the graves of some of the 800,000 people killed in the 1994 genocide. (File photo)

On Sunday, Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said France had to face up to the “difficult truth” of its involvement in the massacre if Paris wants the reconciliation efforts between the two countries to move forward, AFP reported.

“For our two countries to really start getting along, we will have to face the truth, the truth is difficult, the truth of being close to anybody who is associated with genocide understandably is a very difficult truth to accept,” Mushikiwabo said.

She said it was “impossible for our two countries to move forward if the condition is that Rwanda has to forget its history in order to get along with France,” adding that “We cannot move on at the expense of the historical truth of the genocide.”

In an interview with the weekly Jeune Afrique, Rwandan President Paul Kagame denounced France and Belgium for “involvement in the genocide,” when the ethnic majority Hutus killed some 800,000 people, mainly minority Tutsis, during a span of 100 days.

In the interview, published on Sunday, Kagame denounced the “direct role of Belgium and France in the political preparation for the genocide.”

“Twenty years later, the only thing you can say against them (the French) in their eyes is they didn’t do enough to save lives during the genocide,” Kagame told Jeune Afrique.

“That’s a fact, but it hides the main point: the direct role of Belgium and France in the political preparation of the genocide and the participation of the latter in its very execution,” Kagame said.

Kagame’s remarks sparked a diplomatic spat on the eve of the anniversary of the killings.

French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira pulled out of attending the Monday’s events in the capital city of Kigali.

France has repeatedly denied involvement in the genocide, despite findings by Rwanda’s MUCYO commission of inquiry in 2008, according to which France had trained the militias that carried out the killings.

Relations between Kigali and Paris were completely frozen from 2006 to 2009.

The tainted relations between the two countries, however, have improved notably since last month, when in a landmark ruling, France sentenced former Rwandan army captain, Pascal Simbikangwa, to 25 years in prison for his role in the massacre.