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Emmanuel Macron is on an official visit to Rwanda on Thursday 27 May. This rapprochement with Kigali is made possible in particular by the Ducler Commission’s report on France’s responsibility for the 1994 genocide. It was drawn up on the basis of easy access to the official archives of the time. Despite the promise of greater transparency, access to classified documents is still boring for researchers.
In France, the principle, which has constitutional value, is free access to public archives. But there are exceptions: when it comes to nuclear power, for example, documents are “non-transferable”. Unless explicitly authorized, it cannot be accessed. With regard to defense secrecy, there is a legal deadline of fifty years, after which they are available.
Elaborate procedure
Problems, since January 1, 2020, researchers have complained about a procedure that has been hampered by strict application of administrative rules (IGI 1300, for general inter-ministerial instruction), which means that every document must be viewed, declassified and stamped by an archivist. A great task when you know the mass of files held by the various administrations. In the historic defense service alone, “approximately 630,000 document boxes are affected,” according to Thomas Vaisset, a professor at the University of Le Havre, a member of a collective of historians for easier access to the archives.
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This has led to a large protest movement from archivists and historians, blocked in their work, for example against decolonization conflicts. For example, they may be led to request a declassification of a document that they had previously consulted.
Exceptions for recent cases
For later cases, there is a procedure that allows an interested person (lawyer, family, association, researcher) to request an exemption to consult the archives. And it is the administration concerned that decides. As a result, many are opposed to defense secrecy, as the previous UN Special Report on Extrajudicial Executions recently condemned. Agnes Callamard, on the murders of our colleagues Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon in Mali in 2013, whose relatives demanded “a public debate in Parliament” on “secrecy”.
In terms of access to archives, Duclert report would therefore be the exception that proves the rule. The archives were generally opened to members at the express request of Emmanuel Macron. He also promised easier access to Algeria, as recommended in the Stora report, or the transfer to Burkina Faso of all documents relating to Thomas Sankara, murdered in 1987. This was materialized by sending three batches of archives to Ouagadougou in December 2018, January 2019 and the end of April 2020.
We therefore see openings decided by politicians. Some therefore question the agenda and the good faith of decision-makers. Is not the Duclert Commission also a tool to get closer to Rwanda? Did France really communicate everything to the Burkinabé justice at the death of Thomas Sankara?
“The Prince’s Facts”
Bruno Jaffré, in the network “Justice for Sankara, justice for Africa”, doubts this. He is a member of the Secret Défense collective, which brings together around fifteen organizations that work with unsolved criminal cases.
“It’s what we call the prince’s action, that’s exactly it. I think the blockades are always the same, but on the other hand, you have the President, when he wants, often under pressure, the popularity of the people, their ability to mobilize, Macron stands up and says: ‘we will open the documents’, according to his political agenda. This attitude of the French authorities only increases the suspicion that we have a greater participation from France. “
Will the Duclert Commission, whose work has been praised, enable progress for all researchers? Its President Vincent Duclert hopes so. According to him, the conclusions must make it possible to prove to the state that it does not need to be afraid of openness and of historians. He rejects all processes in instrumentalization.
“The political authority has only given researchers the opportunity to work. We used our privileges for the public good. From experience, I believe that it was successful and that it can open up opportunities for the future. We must tell the administrative and political authorities that the examination of the archives does not necessarily lead to collective prosecutions against the state apparatus. I do not think we should be afraid of the truth in the first place. In the future, in some extremely conflicting issues, it may make sense to develop in this way. ”
“A way to take a quiet look at its history”
The Duclert report thus proposes the creation of a post as “archivist of the republic” according to the model of rights defenders, which could make it possible to know exactly what access has been denied, on what grounds, and to be entered by researchers. Especially since many experts, including military experts, believe that the vast majority of secrets are exhausted after ten or fifteen years.
Thomas Vaisset believes that the work of the Duclert Commission “will make it possible to demystify the archives”. “Very often people think that there is ‘truth’ in the archives, that things are hidden there. But we could see from the Commission’s access to these documents that we are very far from this imagination. Having quick access to these documents is also a way to calmly look at their history ”.
A law to facilitate access to archives over 50 years
One reason for optimism for French historians: if the framework for declassifying documents younger than fifty years will not change, it will be developed for older documents in the framework of the bill on the prevention of terrorist acts and intelligence services, which is currently being discussed in the Assembly, and which should be completed soon. This text recognizes “the automatic nature of the declassification of documents when they become transferable”. So no more need for buffering.
France therefore has a fairly comprehensive doctrine of defense secrecy, but this is no exception. Each state protects its records. In the USA, there is a declassification commission that generally releases documents faster, but these are also “edited” more often, ie with large unreadable sections.
The debate about access to archives also finds an echo abroad. At the end of March, Algerian historians demanded that President Tebboune access to those in the War of Independence of the country, which for ten years has been almost the exception.
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