Twenty-three former socialist ministers called on the PS to complain about Raphaël Glucksmann, the head of the PS / Place Publique list for Europeans, about François Mitterrand and the Rwandan genocide, in a letter obtained by AFP Tuesday.
This letter dated May 9, addressed to the First Secretary Olivier Faure and revealed by the Chained Duck , has been signed by Hubert Vedrine, Bernard Cazeneuve - who has recently supported the candidate and will attend one of its meetings Thursday at Lyon -, Jack Lang, Michel Charasse, Elisabeth Guigou, Edith Cresson or Roland Dumas. They are moved by two statements by Raphael Glucksmann. The first would have been pronounced in January: "François Mitterrand has carried in the most radical and most abject way the policy of France in Rwanda". The second, on April 6, was said on the sidelines of its meeting in Toulouse: the former president was, according to the founder of Place Publique, "accomplice of the genocide in Rwanda" perpetrated by the Hutus and who made about 800,000 dead among Tutsis between April and July 1994.
"Nothing can justify accusations of 'complicity in genocide' relayed by Raphael Glucksmann"
"How can we make such a judgment, when France was (...) the only country, at the green light given by the UN, to carry out a humanitarian operation in 1994, during the genocide, to save lives? lives, while the whole world remained indifferent? ", write the ex-ministers.
French politics in Rwanda "may be criticized" but "nothing, absolutely nothing, can justify accusations of 'complicity in genocide' relayed by Raphael Glucksmann, while he is speaking today on behalf of the socialists," continues the mail. Its signatories ask Olivier Faure "to convince Raphael Glucksmann to withdraw his insults and unfounded accusations towards François Mitterrand", and "in case of refusal" that he "finds the appropriate forms to disavow his words". "Whoever carries the list of the PS for the elections can say that on Mitterrand, it is astonishing," insurgent one of the signatories to AFP.
Asked about these remarks during a broadcast of Radio J, May 5, the candidate did not deny them, declaring: "France armed, supported financially and politically the genocidaires" while "François Mitterrand was president of the Republic ". "I subscribe to François Mitterrand's steps on the European construction, the death penalty, the social measures of 1981, not in the African policy of France," he added.