France and Rwanda's genocide: a long wait
Andrew Wallis 20 February 2014
The belated trial of a suspected genocidaire in Paris highlights the
complex political relationship between Rwanda and France. It also
reflects problems in the hard road to international justice, says
Andrew Wallis.
The media scrum on the first day of the trial of a wheelchair-bound
Rwandan genocide suspect at the Palais de Justice in Paris was both
unexpected and unsettling. At first because of the intensity of the
attention: the prisoner in the glass-panelled dock, 54 year-old
Captain Pascal Simbikangwa - Rwanda's former director of intelligence
- had managed to knock from the front pages of Parisian newspapers the
plight of Francois Hollande's government, the president's troubled
personal life and Sochi's winter Olympics.
Then the scale of what this meant hit: twenty years after the genocide
in Rwanda in 1994 that left one million people dead, at last France's
legal system was managing to put before judge and jury a suspect
charged with complicity in the killings. Not since Klaus Barbie (the
Nazi "butcher of Lyon") appeared in the dock in 1987, and the Nazi
militiaman Paul Touvier in 1994, has France tried a suspect accused of
crimes against humanity. Such is the significance of the proceedings,
scheduled to last for six weeks, that they are being filmed for
posterity (only the fifth time that this has been done).
For a white-haired, bespectacled retired schoolteacher called Alain
Gauthier in particular, the opening day is one of undoubted triumph -
as reflected in the mob of camera-crews and journalists that
surrounded him. Gauthier, whose Rwandan Tutsi wife Daphrose lost
dozens of her family in the genocide, has spent the years since
tracking down alleged genocidaire who fled to France in the aftermath.
Gauthier has brought many lawsuits against those he has identified,
and for his efforts has been compared to the Nazi-hunter Simon
Wiesenthal. He and four other civil groups assisted in bringing the
case against Simbikangwa. In a voice trembling with emotion and
relief, he told the media that this court case is above all about
bringing long overdue justice for the survivors and victims.
Indeed, Pascal Simbikangwa's trial raises great questions beyond the
guilt or innocence of one man (who has been in custody since 2008,
when he was arrested on the French Caribbean island of Mayotte where -
under an assumed identity - he was involved in a lucrative trade in
selling fake passports). It reaches to the heart of the French
political and judicial approach to the disturbing subject of a
genocide from which the country's establishment has long attempted to
dissociate itself. Under Francois Mitterrand's presidency (1981-95),
France was the leading backer - financial, military and political - of
the regime of Rwandan dictator Juvénal Habyariamana in the years
before the genocide. That support continued even as there were
consistent reports from inside the country of massacres and horrific
human-rights abuses.
Even as the genocide of the Tutsis was taking place in the summer
months of 1994, Mitterrand officially welcomed two members of the
regime to the Elysée palace, and continued to supply arms to the same
Rwandan forces that it had long trained and financed. In the
genocide's last days, Hutu extremist operatives accused of organising
and perpetrating the killing fled to the south of the country then
under the control of the dubiously "humanitarian" French intervention
called Opération Turquoise. The genocidaires were in a hurry to escape
following defeat by the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) of Paul Kagame;
French forces refused to arrest or disarm these individuals, and many
later were granted permanent residence in France.
The legacy of these years has been heavy. The relationship between
France and the Kagame government in the two decades since 1994 has
been a mix of deep-seated ambivalence and little-hidden mutual
antipathy. In 2006, there was a complete break on the publication of
the Bruguière report, with its intensely disputed charges about the
plane crash that killed Habyarimana and triggered the genocide. In
2008, Rwanda hit back with its own Mucyo commission report, detailing
the Mitterrand's government alleged complicity in the genocide (see
"Rwanda: a step towards truth", 21 January 2012).
Cases against genocide suspects were opened in France as early as
1995, yet they are still to reach trial nineteen years later. On
repeated occasions, suspects have been allowed to continue at liberty,
and granted residency and citizenship; yet just as repeatedly, French
diplomatic figures have denied that political considerations were
blocking either trials in France (under universal jurisdiction) or the
extradition of suspects to Rwanda. The state has shown a marked
reluctance to investigate or take the crimes seriously, so it has been
left to Alain Gauthier and other civil groups to lead the way in
pressing for justice.
French courts have given many reasons to explain why Rwandan doctors,
academics, priests and senior military figures accused of genocide,
extermination, murder and rape could not face justice. Some court
rulings found against extradition to Rwanda on the grounds that the
accused would not get a fair trial; or because Rwanda's genocide law
was passed in 1996, and the absence of such a law before then meant
suspects should not face trial there for a crime that did not then
exist.
True, in June 1999, the Paris appeals court decided that alleged
genocidaire could be tried in France. In 2004, however, the European
Court for Human Rights - acting in response to complaints from
survivors - condemned the slowness of France's judicial system in
bringing theCatholic priest Wenceslas Munyeshyaka to trial. Today,
nineteen years after the opening of a French judicial investigation
against him for rape and mass murder, he is free and working in a
Catholic parish in the pretty Normandy town of Gisours.
"Investigations" continue.
Another prominent case is that of Agathe Habyarimana, prominent
genocide suspect and widow of Rwanda's former president. In 2007, her
claim for refugee status had been refused in a series of judgments by
the French asylum commission (OFPRA) and then the appeal and supreme
court. In a blistering verdict the former ruled that she was "at the
heart of the genocidal regime responsible for the preparation and
execution of the genocide that occurred in Rwanda during the year
1994." Since then, however, Mme Habyarimana has continued to live in
an affluent Parisian suburb untouched by the judicial process,
something Gauthier describes as "scandalous".
Two factors subsequently contributed to a modest unblocking of the
situation. The first is a tenuous thaw in political relations, which
seems to have lifted the judicial deadlock to a limited extent. The
then French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, made a long-awaited visit to
Rwanda in February 2010, the first in two decades by a French head of
state; soon after, Agathe Habyarimana, was arrested in Paris, though
she was swiftly released. In the same year, the Sarkozy administration
announced - sixteen years after the first suspects arrived in France -
that a special investigative commission would be set up to address
crimes against humanity and genocide. The foreign minister Bernard
Kouchner declared that France "would not be a sanctuary for those
accused of such crimes".
The second factor contributing to the trial at the Palais de Justice
is a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that suspects
will get a fair trial in Rwanda, following wholesale changes to the
judicial system there. As a result, the United Nations, Canada and the
Nordic countries have sent back suspects to Rwanda; meanwhile,
Belgium, Finland, Norway, Switzerland and the Netherlands have held
their own trials. Germany has just convicted its first Rwandan
genocide suspect after a trial in Frankfurt. This flurry of action
increased the pressure on France: for the country to have reached the
forthcoming twentieth anniversary without having put a single suspect
in the dock would risk widespread condemnation, and accusations that
France was shielding the accused and failing to serve its obligations
under the genocide convention of 1948.
So the slow but perceptible effort to address the politically divisive
issue of these genocide trials by the French government has begun to
make limited progress. There is, though, still real resistance among
some of the military and political "old guard" in France - even to
accept there was a genocide, let alone that France has any questions
to answer or legal obligations in relation to it.
Colonel Michel Robardey, an adviser to the Rwandan gendarmerie from
1990-93, is one of the few witnesses so far called in Simbikangwa's
defence. In his testimony he dismissed the notion that "massacres"
occurred before the genocide as RPF "disinformation", against detailed
reports by the UN and several international human-rights groups
attesting to them. He then described the genocide as a "spontaneous"
reaction by the Hutu population to the death of their president. There
was, according to the colonel, no organisation or planning; the
notorious "double genocide" allegation, that each side was responsible
for massacring the other, was again paraded.
This statement has been used by many French military and political
figures, including former prime minister Dominique de Villepin and
Mitterrand himself; it has become a vital tool in "rebranding" and
downplaying French support for the Habyarimana and interim
governments. A number of Serb nationalists have borrowed it to
"explain" Srebrenica and indeed some Nazis to "explain" the Holocaust.
By the time Robardey left the dock, the court had learned less about
Simbikangwa's guilt or innocence than about the mindset of some French
military officers who served alongside the Rwandan army in the early
1990s when it was fighting against the RPF.
Such attitudes do little to reassure Rwanda's government and public
that - after the inevitably short-term media interest in the
commemoration - France will ensure continued justice and more trials.
Indeed, survivors have broached the fear that this costly legal
proceeding could just be a public-relations gimmick; a Rwandan
newspaper headline - "Kigali unmoved by Simbikangwa trial as many
suspects roam free in France" - reflects a widespread scepticism in
the country where the crimes took place.
Rwanda's commemoration events take place on 7 April 2014. It is not
clear yet whether, apart from the French ambassador in Kigali, any
visiting dignitary will represent France. The then foreign minister
Alain Juppé made sure to avoid Paul Kagame when Rwanda's president
visited Paris in September 2011, as did other senior government
officials such as the head of the senate and speaker of the national
assembly. The mutual distrust and dislike is still very evident.
These feelings have been further strained in recent months by what
Rwandans see as substantial "provocations" in France towards the
memory of the genocide. On 20 December 2013, the Canal+ television
channel broadcast a comedy programme featuring sketches that were
interpreted as ridiculing the genocide and its victims (in one, actors
in parody-"Rwandan" style sang to the tune of a popular French
nursery-rhyme the words "mum is upstairs, cut into pieces; daddy is
downstairs, he lacks an arm", to the evident amusement of the
audience). An outcry by survivors' groups in France, and an online
petition, led television regulators to reprimand the channel.
Then, in France's 2014 new-year honours' list, the journalist and
author Pierre Péan received the Légion d'honneur. Among his works is
Noires Fureurs, Blancs Menteurs: Rwanda 1990-1994 (2006) which blamed
the RPF and the Tutsis for hoodwinking the international community
when, according to Péan, they were the ones responsible for the
"massacres" (which he denied amounted to genocide). Many human-rights
groups and victims saw this award to someone seen as in the vanguard
of genocide denial as at least untimely, and at worst a deliberate
attempt by some senior French officials to negate the forthcoming
commemoration.
Back in assize-court number three at the Palais de Justice, Pascal
Simbikangwa's defence team is struggling to cope. Their dubious
strategy has included accusing one human-rights investigator who
published a lengthy report on massacres in 1991-92 of only being in
Rwanda because he fancied Tutsi women. The horrified reaction of
judge, jury and public should give some clue this was not a tactic
liable to work. They were also badly let down when one of their key
witnesses, the Belgian scholar Filip Reyntjens, verified the existence
of death-squads and the akazu or politico-mafia group around senior
regime figures.
Simbikangwa himself though has proved to be a charismatic and lively
defendant, anything but awed by the 7,000 pages of documents stacked
behind the three judges and six lay jury. The verdict will rest on
whether prosecutors can prove that he assisted in organising and
arming the militia that carried out mass killing at two roadblocks.
His defence team has already tried to have the trial stopped claiming
their client cannot have a fair hearing; political pressure, they
assert, is driving a headlong rush to complete at least one case
before the twentieth anniversary.
While this trial made headlines in the French press, far less
attention has been given to significant developments in a related one
at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) at Arusha,
Tanzania. There, three more senior Rwandan officers, including a
general, had been previously found guilty of genocide; but at the
ICTR's appeal bench on 11 February 2014 two of the three defendants
had their convictions quashed and the third had his sentence reduced
from twenty to fifteen years. The presiding judge was the
controversial 83 year-old Theodor Meron; it is the latest of a series
of decisions by the American judge to overturned such convictions both
in Arusha and at International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague, Netherlands. The rulings made little
news outside Rwanda, where "international justice" has become
synonymous with impunity.
The explosion of violent conflicts in Syria, Libya, Mali, South Sudan
and the Central African Republic, and the allegations of war crimes,
ethnic cleansing or genocide that surround them, underscores the
importance of seeking justice over Rwanda's genocide. These conflicts
also mean the west is, for a long time to come, going to face the
issue of bringing alleged offenders to trial when they have fled to
Europe or the United States.
They also imply, as Alain Gauthier and others would argue, that Pascal
Simbikangwa's trial should become the rule not an exception. If
western justice is seen to take twenty years and be beholden to
political rather than ethical or judicial considerations, it will only
encourage impunity and further encourage alleged mass murderers to
flee to its shores. The complex issues around international justice
increase when the west has itself - as in Rwanda - been embroiled in
the situation; any subsequent trials might expose a western state's
true role as well as the guilt or innocence of the accused. For many
survivors, Simbikangwa is not the only one in the dock.
About the author
Andrew Wallis is a researcher who specialises in central and east
Africa. He is the author of Silent Accomplice: The Untold Story of the
Role of France in the Rwandan genocide (IB Tauris, 2006)
Related Articles
International courts: justice vs politics
Andrew Wallis
The DR Congo: behind the headlines
Andrew Wallis
DR Congo: beyond the crisis-cycle
Andrew Wallis
DR Congo: the politics of suffering
Andrew Wallis
Rwandan rifts in La Francafrique
Andrew Wallis
Rwanda: a step towards truth
Andrew Wallis
Read On
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)
Collectif des parties civiles pour le Rwanda / Collective of Civil
Parties for Rwanda (CPCR)
Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 1954-94: History of a Genocide (C
Hurst, 2nd edition, 1998)
Statecrime
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
Hague Justice Portal
Kigali Wire
Impunity Watch
Andrew Wallis, Silent Accomplice: The Untold Story of the Role of
France in the Rwandan genocide (IB Tauris, 2006)
Martin Shaw, What is Genocide? (Polity, 2007)
Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and
Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (Yale University Press, 2007)
More On
Andrew Wallis is a researcher who specialises in central and east
Africa. He is the author of Silent Accomplice: The Untold Story of the
Role of France in the Rwandan genocide (IB Tauris, 2006)
http://www.opendemocracy.net/andrew-wallis/france-and-rwandas-genocide-long-wait
--
SIBOMANA Jean Bosco
Google+: https://plus.google.com/110493390983174363421/posts
YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9B4024D0AE764F3D
http://www.youtube.com/user/sibomanaxyz999
***Online Time:15H30-20H30, heure de Montréal.***Fuseau horaire
domestique: heure normale de la côte Est des Etats-Unis et Canada
(GMT-05:00)***
| Reply via web post | Reply to sender | Reply to group | Start a New Topic | Messages in this topic (1) |
.To post a message: RwandaLibre@yahoogroups.com; .To join: RwandaLibre-subscribe@yahoogroups.com; .To unsubscribe from this group,send an email to:
RwandaLibre-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
_____________________________________________________
More news: http://www.amakurunamateka.com ; http://www.ikangurambaga.com ; http://rwandalibre.blogspot.co.uk
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment