>Without French role, Rwandan genocide could not have
>occurred, new book
>says
>FCN WEB POSTED07-10-2001
>BORDEAUX, France (PANA)- ìIf we are anguished about
>the Tutsi genocide,
>itís because it would not have happened without the
>active complicity
>of
>the French State,î writes author Jean-Paul Gouteux in
>a new book.
>
>Just published in France, the book is called ìUN
>g»nocide sans
>importanceLa
>Fran¡afrique au Rwandaî (ìA needless genocide-France
>Africa in
>Rwandaî).
>The 160-page book was published at Tahin Partyís, a
>publishing house
>based
>in Lyon, France.
>
>Mr. Gouteux has previously written a lot on the
>genocide (such as ìA
>state
>secret genocideFrance and Rwanda: 1990-1997,î
>published in 1998).
>ìParis
>has had, since 1990, very close military relations
>with the Rwandan
>army
>(FAR), a Hutu army which was statutorily ethnic.
>Within four years, the
>funding by the French taxpayers helped equip this
>army, which increased
>from 5,300 to over 40,000 men,î said Mr. Gouteux, a
>specialist in
>sleeping
>sickness who worked in Kivu.
>
>ìThe Rwandan military was commanded and advised by
>French officers,
>some of
>whom even wore Rwandan uniforms,î he adds, describing
>the official
>statements of the French authorities to vindicate
>themselves from the
>genocide as lies. In order to better focus the scope
>of the French
>implication in the tragedy, Mr. Gouteux reminds his
>readers that the
>interim government, which perpetrated the genocide of
>the Tutsis, was
>formed inside the French embassy and at the Rwandan
>Defense Ministry.
>
>French ambassador Marlaud and Col. Bagosora of the
>Rwandan Army
>supervised
>the formation of the government within two days of the
>assassination of
>President Habyarimana, the author says. Worse still,
>the author says he
>regrets the attitude of some French officials,
>especially of Socialist
>MP
>Paul Quiles, who chaired a commission of inquiry set
>up by Paris to
>look
>into the genocide.
>
>The author says that the latter ìviolently heckled on
>the telephone a
>female survivor of the genocide to dissuade her from
>being heardî and
>that
>her written account was not published in any of the
>four volumes of the
>Quiles Commission Report.
>
>ìThis survivor went through a process of ethnic
>control conducted at
>check
>points near Kigali manned by the French military. She
>said she could
>hear
>the screaming of young Tutsi girls who were being
>raped at the same
>check
>points by French soldiers,î reveals Mr. Gouteux, who
>observes that in
>this
>puzzling account, ìIt is the memory of the victims
>that was silenced.î
>
>Mr. Gouteux is also puzzled at the lack of sympathetic
>reaction of the
>international community in the face of the million
>victims of the 1994
>genocide. He laments: ìEverything goes on as if the
>million victims had
>never existed.î The author also complains that ìthe
>events over the
>last
>six years have shown the definite impunity of the
>French in Rwanda.î
>
>__________________________________________________
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, visit:
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/aam.html
AAM Website: http://www.danenet.wicip.org/aam
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|