Rwanda genocide probe into France reopens old wounds
Source: Reuters
By Arthur Asiimwe KIGALI, Oct 29 (Reuters) - A Rwandan probe into France's role in the 1994 genocide has reopened bitter resentment in the tiny central African nation, still healing from the slaughter in which many believe Paris had a largely unseen hand. The two former allies have been at loggerheads since the end of the genocide, since Rwanda accuses France of backing former President Juvenal Habyarimana's government. France denies any involvement and instead says its military interventions helped Rwandans. The government of President Paul Kagame, a Tutsi whose Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels defeated the Habyarimana government's Hutu militias to end the killing, blames France for training soldiers they knew would later commit genocide. Twelve years after extremist Hutus slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu sympathisers over 100 days, Rwanda launched the commission last week to bring out the truth about France's role. "The only thing I love about the French is their sense of style," said survivor Candide Nyirabutama. "However when it comes to their cynical policies -- especially in our country -- there's no love between me and them." Though Rwanda was a Belgian colony until independence in 1962, France maintained close links with the Francophone country from 1975 to 1994, providing financial and military support to Habyarimana's government. Some Rwandans say their country was run by remote control from Paris. "I do not have kind words for the French," shopkeeper Joseph Harelimana, 30, said. "It's the French that held the key to our survival -- had they wished to save us, then those innocent lives would not have perished," said Harelimana, who lost 10 relatives. 'KILLED LIKE FLIES' One event sure to take centre-stage in the inquiry is a June 1994 massacre in the hilltop village of Bisesero where as many as 50,000 Tutsis were hacked to death by Hutu militiamen. Survivors say French soldiers told Tutsis they would protect them, but instead gathered them in one place where they were later hacked to death with machetes. "They abandoned us hours later after Hutu militiamen had surrounded us -- that day people were killed like flies," said survivor Valence Habiyambere. When English-speaking Tutsi rebels invaded Rwanda in 1990, the French described the war in linguistic terms, National University of Rwanda political scientist Anastase Shyaka said. "The propaganda was that the English-speaking people had invaded French-speaking people," Shyaka said. "That was one of the excuses that the French used to openly support the then-ruling regime." France intervened in Rwanda three times between 1990 and 1994, and each time has been accused of complicity in events of the genocide or those leading up to it. From October 1990 to December 1993, the French army led "Operation Noroit" which many Rwandans saw as backing Habyarimana's government against the Tutsi-led invasion of Kagame's Rwanda Patriotic Front rebels. "This operation allowed the French to organise and train Rwandan troops, who subsequently formed the Interahamwe militias," Shyaka told Reuters, referring to the genocide death squads. On April 8, 1994, two days after Habyarimana was killed when his plane was shot down -- signalling the start of the genocide -- France launched "Operation Amaryllis" to evacuate 1,500 residents, mostly Westerners trapped in Kigali. Rwandan survivors criticised the French for turning away Rwandans who wanted to escape the massacres. A U.N. force commander in Kigali, Belgian Colonel Luc Marchal, reported that one of the French planes arrived with 5 tonnes of ammunition that was taken to a government military camp. France denies that.
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