Genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda: Juppé recognizes the errors of judgment of France
Former French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé.
Reuters / Regis Duvignau
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
27 years after the start of the genocide in Rwanda, Alain Juppé recognizes the errors of judgment of France, even if he is pleased that Paris has been exempted from complicity in genocide, by the Duclert report.
In a column granted to
Le
Monde
, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs stressed that the French authorities above all lacked the understanding which would have enabled them to act without delay against the massacres.
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Alain Juppé recognizes in the columns of the
World
the blindness of France at the start of the massacres when it initially withdrew its troops: "
We did not measure that we were abandoning hundreds of thousands of Tutsi promised to death. .... We did not imagine that our forces would have been able, provided they had the support of Belgian paratroopers, Italian commandos, American marines, all associated with the blue helmets, to oppose the killers, to protect the victims. .
"
This "
act of international cowardice
", as he describes it, cannot exonerate France from its own responsibilities, underlines the former head of French diplomacy, who recalls that he was the first to use the term "
genocide
" in order to "
break an unbearable silence
".
The former head of French diplomacy also points to his own responsibilities: “
I made the mistake of believing reconciliation still feasible in May-June-July 1994, when the horror of the genocide unleashed in April made it impossible
.
"
Alain Juppé nonetheless welcomes the very recent conclusions of the commission's historians.
Duclert.
“
France,”
he wrote, “
is finally exonerated from the accusation of complicity in the preparation, even the execution of the genocide, unjustly brought against it for years ...
” As for “Operation Turquoise”, it has according to this report, he underlines, accomplished
"a real effort of protection of threatened Tutsis"
.
To listen Guest Africa: Vincent Duclert: "France has contributed to reinforce the racist drift and the overarmament of Rwanda"
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