The French president is in Rwanda for the first time on Thursday, May 27, 2021. He is only the second French president to make the trip since the Tutsi genocide in 1994. The first highlight of this trip was the visit to the Gisozi genocide memorial where more than 250,000 people are buried. A visit after which the French head of state spoke for a long-awaited speech. He mentioned France’s responsibility.
Emmanuel Macron did not utter the word “apology”, an apology that was, however, expected by some personalities in Rwanda. If he mentioned France’s “responsibility”, he thinks it was not an accomplice: “The murderers who haunted the moors, the hills, the churches did not have France’s face. She was not an accomplice. The blood that constituted did not disgrace his weapons or the hands of his soldiers as also with their eyes they saw indistinct, healed wounds and suffocated their tears. “
The French president then returned to France’s duty: “But France has a role, a history and a political responsibility in Rwanda. And she has a duty: to face history and recognize the share of suffering it has inflicted on the Rwandan people by letting silence rule over the examination of the truth for too long. By participating in a conflict where it did not take precedence in 1990, France failed to hear the voice of those who warned it, otherwise it overestimated its strength by thinking of being able to stop the worst. France did not understand that, by wanting to prevent a regional conflict or a civil war, it was actually staying on the sidelines of a genocide regime. By ignoring the warnings of the clearest observers, France assumed an overwhelming responsibility in a spiral that ended in the worst, even though it was just trying to avoid it. “
Yet the French head of state spoke of the forgiveness of the victims: “Only those who have gone through the night can perhaps forgive, give us the gift of forgiving ourselves.”
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