Emmanuel Macron believes that France “could have stopped the genocide” of 1994 in Rwanda “with its Western and African allies”, but “did not have the will”, the Elysée reported on Thursday April 4, a few days before the 30th anniversary of the start of the massacres, Sunday April 7. The French president, who had already recognized in 2021 France’s “responsibilities” in the genocide, will speak on Sunday “through a video which will be published on his social networks”, his entourage told AFP.
“The Head of State will recall in particular that, when the phase of total extermination against the Tutsi began, the international community had the means to know and act, through its knowledge of the genocides revealed to us by the survivors of the Armenians. and the Shoah,” added the presidency.
Invited by the Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, to the commemorations of the 30th anniversary of the genocide on Sunday, Emmanuel Macron will not attend, and will be represented by his Minister of Foreign Affairs Stéphane Séjourné and the Secretary of State for the Sea Hervé Berville , born in Rwanda.
In one hundred days, between 800,000 and 1 million people, the vast majority of them Tutsi, a minority group compared to the Hutu, were exterminated, most of them with machetes. In May 2021, during a visit to Rwanda, Emmanuel Macron judged that France had “prevailed silence for too long over the examination of the truth”, while considering that France had “not been complicit.”