France pours scorn on Rwanda rape accusations
Source: Reuters
PARIS, Dec 14 (Reuters) - France poured scorn on Thursday on charges French soldiers raped Rwandan women who sought refuge on their bases during the African country's 1994 genocide, saying the accusations were part of a political campaign by Kigali. Two anonymous ethnic Tutsi women told a Rwandan commission on Wednesday they had been raped by French soldiers, who were part of a U.N. peacekeeping force, after fleeing machete-wielding Hutu militia gangs. Asked about the accusations, French Defence Ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau said they were made without any proof and the commission hearing them had been set up to find evidence of French wrongdoing, not to uncover the truth. "I would say that this initiative, which bears no relation to the search for truth, can only provoke one reaction: that of indignation," he told reporters at a weekly news conference. French-Rwandan relations deteriorated last month after a French judge called for Rwandan President Paul Kagame to stand trial over the shooting down of a plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana. His killing was widely seen as the trigger for the genocide in which an estimated 800,000 people died. "These accusations have been made without a shred of proof, with a purely political aim," Bureau said. A French judicial source said last month anti-terrorism magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere had written to the United Nations asking for Kagame to be brought before the Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Kigali has cut diplomatic ties with Paris and thousands have joined anti-French protests since Bruguiere's accusations. Kigali accuses France of trying to distract attention from what it says was Paris' role in the genocide. France was fully cooperating with judicial investigations and its officers who were called to testify before the ICTR did so, Bureau said. "We do not know which precise facts the testimonies used to relate to," he said, adding: "We know that this commission was set up for purely political reasons. It will never search for the truth."
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