“The Hutus are killing the Tutsi and, apparently, they have decided to kill them all. It’s called genocide!” : on his return from Rwanda, in May 94, Bernard Kouchner, then sent as a humanitarian to get orphans out of the country, bluntly stated what was happening there. On April 7, Rwanda will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the 1994 genocide: in one hundred days, between 800,000 and 1 million people, the vast majority Tutsi, a minority group compared to the Hutu, were exterminated, most of them with machetes. A carnage which will last three months, in almost general indifference. For L’Express, the man who was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2007 to 2001, looks back on the gray areas of the attitude of the president at the time, François Mitterrand, the share of responsibility of the French authorities, the role of the military , the slowness of the international response… He also gives his vision of the Rwandan “miracle”, while the current president, the autocrat Paul Kagame, in power for twenty-four years, will probably be re-elected on July 15, without any real opposition.
L’Express: Thirty years after the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda, what is your view on this period and, in particular, on the attitude of France, which has been widely documented, but of which you were the first witness?
Bernard Kouchner: At the beginning, no one believed in a genocide. However, back in Paris, I spoke, I did a lot of television and interviews, but no one could imagine the scale of the massacre. There was a simplistic vision of what was happening there: the FPR of Paul Kagame [dont les attaques à partir de 1990 avaient déclenché la guerre civile au Rwanda, qui s’est “conclue” officiellement par les accords d’Arusha, en 1993], they were “the bad guys” and the legitimate power of Kigali was only fighting them. This was the reading grid in France, and in particular in “the Elysée group”, those close to the president of the time, François Mitterrand. However, I had telephoned François Mitterrand twice from Rwanda, telling him: “You are completely wrong. Here, we are walking on corpses.” He replied: “I know you, you always exaggerate.” I even returned to France to accompany him on a trip to South Africa, where I was to speak to Nelson Mandela. I asked Mandela to come to Rwanda, because I believed that only he could stop the massacre. He refused because he had just been elected in South Africa. Then, I was twice able to speak alone with the President of the Republic and tell him what I had seen and the horror of what was happening.
In 1994, we are in a cohabitation government. But the file is handled directly by the Elysée: the Prime Minister at the time, Edouard Balladur, did not take it up?
At the Elysée, there was a small core around François Mitterrand, who, undoubtedly, wanted to assert himself in relation to cohabitation with the government of Edouard Balladur. In this group, there was the secretary general of the presidency, Hubert Védrine, the chief of staff, Jacques Lanxade, his deputy, Jean-Pierre Huchon, the diplomat Bruno Delaye… It is certain that they should have known . Probably, in this group, the military, at least, knew, because they receive information, dispatches from the DGSE, etc. So there were warnings. Did they not read them or did they not want to know? I don’t know. Even today, I cannot say to myself that Mitterrand knew and wanted to ignore this reality. How do you expect the leader of the left to be informed of a genocide and not react? He was at least responsible for relations with Juvénal Habyarimana [NDLR : un Hutu, président du Rwanda soutenu par la France et dont la mort, dans le crash de son avion, abattu par un missile, le 6 avril 1994, à Kigali, marqua le début du génocide]. The French were not on the front line to shoot, of course, but they were on the front line all the same, because they formed the army, the genocidal army. But, in truth, it wasn’t just the army. All the people participated in the genocide, everyone killed their neighbor, even children.
Why, all the same, such indifference from political leaders in France?
First of all, it was a former Belgian colony, it was not really “home”, Rwanda. Second, there was a belief in the presence of the British, because the RPF rebellion had its bases in Uganda, and Uganda was a former British colony. Third, there was allegedly the “hand” of the Americans, because Paul Kagame had been trained militarily by them. Moreover, Kagame did not speak French! On one of my returns from Rwanda, I met Alain Juppé, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs, and who was the first in the cohabitation government to speak of genocide. I asked for an interposition force and Juppé was in favor of it. But he explained to me that there were tensions within the executive. Eventually France did it, through the UN, I had to convince Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to send forces. Operation Turquoise began in June, but the majority of Tutsi were already dead.
The precise role of this operation, which occurs when the genocide has already largely taken place, remains unclear thirty years later…
Operation Turquoise was carried out with instructions. These were not to “support the Tutsi”. No way. It was to “make peace”, but the Hutus were almost among themselves at this point. The operation was organized by France, with a mandate from the United Nations. The soldiers arrived from the DRC. And, unfortunately, they let the genocidaires pass, in particular the members of the government [qui fuyaient le Rwanda après la prise de pouvoir de Kagamé, début juillet].
Paul Kagame, who has led the country since 2000, faces a presidential election on July 15. He has virtually no opposition. What do you think of his policy, which made Rwanda an economic power but neglected the issue of human rights?
Frankly, Kagame was great. Rwanda has become the most brilliant country in Africa. The reconciliation process in the country has been incredible. Everyone had participated in the massacre. There were so many people that we couldn’t judge them all. I visited the prisons. I spoke with assassins. Traditional courts, “gacaca”, made it possible to confront collective guilt. Kagame had to rebuild the country with the Hutu and the rest of the Tutsi. It had to work. Of course, we criticized Kagame, we would have preferred a perfect democrat, but that was not possible.
In 2021, the Duclert report was published, commissioned by Emmanuel Macron. It highlights France’s failings, but without going as far as complicity in genocide. The president will not go to the April 7 commemorations. Should he apologize on behalf of France ?
Emmanuel Macron had twenty years of France’s delay to make up for, he did what was necessary for relations to be restored. There was a denial on the part of the French authorities, the book by Vincent Duclert [La France face au génocide des Tutsi. Ed. Tallandier, 2024], even more detailed than his report, shows this very well. Excuses ? Yes, that would be better.
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