France and the Rwandan genocide...

[Black&Red]

Here's the implication of the French government(social-democrat, and neo-conservative)

-From 1990 to 1993 France formed the Rwandan army, which formed the militias to kill the Tutsi enemy.

-After the coups of the 6th and 7th of April 1994(premeditated assassinations of democrats political leaders) the Rwandan replacing government (GIR), that will supervise the genocide, is being constituted in the French embassy in Kigali.

-All along of the genocide, France kept on delivering weapons to the Hutu extremists, who are committing the genocide, first at Kigali, then by Goma in Zaire. These arm sells are financed notably by French banks.

-At the UN, France supports the GIR and delays the decision to do an embargo on weapons as well as the qualification of "genocide" to the current massacres(following the example of the USA). Representatives of the GIR are received very officially at the Elysée(French Presidents residence), at Matignon(French prime ministers residence) and at the Quai d'Orsay(minister of foreign affairs) during the genocide.

-During the various French military interventions(Amaryllis, Turquoise) the French army distinguishes itself by its passivity facing the massacres. During operation Turquoise, sure a few tens of thousands Tutsi are saved, but in many cases the French military didn't intervene to make the massacres end(at Bisesero for example). Militias are not disarmed. The genocide stops only in the zones taken by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR), not in the zones controlled by Turquoise.

-Some of the genociders (dignitaries of the Habyarimana regime and the GIR, members officers of the hard core of the extremists) are ex filtrated by France towards Zaire and other countries, some are even welcomed to France.

-Others, refuged in Zaire, try to rebuild a military force to re-conquer power in Rwanda, after the victory of the FPR. France, who controls the airport of Goma, accords them to rearm themselves. France is believed to have contributed to the training of genociders in central-Africa and used a contingent of genociders to support the coup of Sassou Nguesso in Congo in 1997.


sources from: http://survie.org/genocide/France-Rwanda-Complicite-de

[manic expression]

Yeah, pretty shameful, really. If you go back further, the Belgian colonial authorities (and later French, IIRC) basically invented the Hutu vs Tutsi divide by artificially defining the two groups as different races (when traditionally they intermarried all the time and had very little antipathy). The colonialists said the Tutsis were smarter because they had smaller noses, larger skulls, etc., and gave them tons of privileges over the Hutus, which created a lot of resentment; when they left, they gave the Hutus all the power after using the Tutsis to screw them for decades, which was a recipe for disaster.

This is all off the top of my head, but I researched this a lot some years back when Hotel Rwanda came out (I also saw Paul Rusesabagina speak in person).

[Dimentio]

The most sick thing was that France did not do it for any material gains, but because they wanted that French would remain being the most frequently used language of Rwanda.

[Pogue]

The US involvement is interesting too. The western powers showed great hypocrisy in this period too, claiming there was no reason for them to intervene to prevent genocide when in reality they were araid of suffering the same defeats they saw in Somalia a few years earlier.

Imperialism at its worse - 'ethinc' divisions created by the west, countries ravaged then abandoned by the west, etc.

[Dimentio]

USA and England actually were pro-Tutsi on this one, if they would have any position so to say.