The burden of justice over genocide

A visitor tours the Nyamata Genocide Memorial Centre in Rwanda on April 4, 2014. The genocide mainly targeted the Tutsi community. PHOTO | SIMON MAINA | AFP

What you need to know:

  • The impact of the mass murder will continue to be felt for generations to come.
  • Those that support, finance or give comfort to genocidaires will know no peace until they admit their complicity

Genocide is the worst crime in the existence of humankind.

Where it has happened, it has left a mark passed on by generations.

Its memory, inscribed in scars, has shaped the destinies of victims and perpetrators in diametrically opposite ways.

The genocide mainly targeted at the Tutsi community of Rwanda 23 years ago is a case in point.

It was the most efficient and brutal campaign to exterminate a people and its ramifications still reverberate around the world today.

JUSTICE

The impact of the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of people within just 100 days, approximately, will continue to be felt for generations to come.

It is the reason persons and entities, including governments, complicit in its planning and execution have spared no effort in trying to cover their tracks.

They have engaged in a campaign of denial and disinformation, trying to distort the truth.

But their vile efforts will fail because, as we say in Rwanda, the truth always passes through fire and will emerge unscathed.

Such is the predicament France finds itself in. It craves freedom from its historic burden of 'complicity'.

FRANCE

Only a full admission of its heinous role will redeem it. It is claimed that France advised Rwanda’s genocidaires, financed and sheltered them when their monstrous campaign collapsed.

It is France that still denies the genocide against the Tutsi and moderate Hutus and it is France that still gives refuge to those who planned and carried out the killings.

It is France’s fate to suffer condemnation by survivors and all peace-loving people of the world. 

Washington DC-based law firm Cunningham Levy Muse LLP has released and submitted to the French authorities a report documenting the role and knowledge of its officials in the 1994 genocide.

EVIDENCE

The Muse Report indicates that there is sufficient evidence to substantiate allegations of France’s involvement, specifically the role of its officials.

It also adduces evidence that accountability continues to be undermined by French actors. The report details the following:  

(a) French officials facilitated the flow of weapons into Rwanda in the build-up to the genocide, despite knowing about attacks on the minority Tutsis.

(b) Despite knowledge of massacres in the early 1990s, French officials allowed genocidaires to meet in its embassy in Kigali and form the interim government that presided over Rwanda during the genocide.

(c) Private communications between French officials reveal that Opération Turquoise, which was presented as a humanitarian mission, had, in fact, a military objective of propping up the interim government responsible for the genocide and preventing its removal by the Rwanda Patriotic Front, which eventuality ended the atrocities in July 1994.

PROSECUTION
(d) French officials provided safe harbour to suspected genocidaires and has obstructed attempts to bring them to justice.
Documents
(e) French authorities have refused to declassify and release documents for a full understanding of the officials’ activities during the genocide.

(f) France has failed to extradite or prosecute the majority of the dozens of genocide suspects.

(g) The 1998 French Parliamentary Commission’s investigation into the role of French officials was neither transparent nor complete.

FUGITIVES
Rwanda has accepted the report’s recommendation that these facts merit a full investigation into the responsibility of French officials in the genocide.

According to genocide scholars, there are eight stages to the act: Classification, symbolisation, dehumanisation, organisation, polarisation, preparation and extermination, with the final stage being denial.

Its evident that France is implementing the final phase to mask the evil deeds.

France has 39 indicted fugitives wanted over the crime of genocide - the largest number of any country in Europe.

REDEMPTION

Among those that continue to roam freely in France, are those indicted by the UN-instituted International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

France is a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Justice travels in long and winding contours to reach its intended recipients.

However long it takes, it must arrive at its destination.  

Those that support, finance or give comfort to genocidaires will know no peace until they admit their complicity and seek the victims’ redemption.

That is not to much to ask, or is it?

Mr Kamasa is the first secretary of the Rwanda High Commission in Nairobi. Twitter @KimKamasa