The twentieth anniversary of the genocide was an opportunity to publicly demand
accountability from the French government of its responsibility in this abjection. Once
more, it has a rounded back. And if, finally, it is the Great Muette that spoke the most?
Fran?ois Graner scrutinized the statements of French military on the issue. ---- "For
those who have, is it not a little known the Rwanda before 1990, the question of who was
aware that the situation[...] had a very high risk of genocide has no meaning. It is even
a rare hypocrisy because, in fact, no one can claim to have ignored. " Who speaks? One or
a horrible militant anti-imperialist? Way. This is Lieutenant-Colonel Michel Robardey,
police officer and technical adviser to the Rwandan police from 1990 to 1993. He spoke
well at a symposium on the "Rwandan drama" held October 20, 2007 at the Palace Luxembourg.
This phrase, and many others, it can be found in a small explosive book Fran?ois Graner,
exceptional in its precision and simplicity: Sword and Machete .
The French army, which chaperoning the Rwandan Armed Forces since the 1970s, the Elysee
Matignon, the Quai d'Orsay ... all knew the nature of the Rwandan state, satellite of
France in the region of the Great Lakes totalitarian segregationist and pogrom against the
Tutsi minority.
Clean hands of the French army?
However, despite the accumulation of evidence, the French state and its armed wing deny,
for twenty years, any liability in the 1994 genocide. Yet, over the years, the military
has let slip in this regard, many testimonies, placed end to end, is an implicit
admission. The researcher and activist Fran?ois Graner worked on this material. He
stripped dozens of statements made to the press, at conferences, before commissions of
inquiry or in their memoirs, by a French officer who was stationed in Rwanda during the
genocide and during the previous four years fortnight.
Among them, we must distinguish two. The first is a camera man: pure product of the French
military school, passionate geostrategic, Admiral Jacques Lanxade was chief of personal
staff of President Mitterrand (1989-1991), then Chief of Joint Chiefs of Staff
(1991-1995). His speech is very heavy. The second is a man of action: saying 'inextricably
Christian French soldier ", Col. Didier Tauzin was head of the first parachute regiment of
marines (1990-1994), a unit shock army French. This is the same type of lightning war
rages having to wait for the green light from the "political" to act, and still protest,
twenty years later, the war was winnable. Since his retirement, he pours ... a lot.
The risk of genocide: secret
In the book, all their statements are carefully pinned referenced, orderly, and illuminate
forty very factual questions. From 1990 to 1993, France has it the risk of genocide of
Tutsis? French officers they order the Rwandan army? They arm and they lead the murderers?
Do they help to eliminate Tutsis file? In 1994, French officers are they involved in the
attack of 6 April, which set fire to the powder? France, she delivers weapons to
genocidal? The humanitarian Operation Turquoise has he been a facade? French officers they
evacuate the government of genocide? Suggest they flee the killers? At each of these
questions, quotes provide direct or indirect answers. The result is a relentless
prosecution case before the court of history.
Why the French government he supported a genocidal State in its deadly leak before?
President Mitterrand gives the answer in advance, in one of his speeches in the 1980s. He
believed that Rwanda was facing the "Anglophone front" in Africa, a bulwark of "backyard
which I claim, when encroached, it is reclaimed and returned to France. In the backyard I
distinguish first our language, our industry and our security are so many fronts which
keep our defenses without taking his eyes. That one gives and the citadel fall. This
warrior image conveys exactly my thought. " She led, once again, the French State as an
accomplice of the supreme crime.
Guillaume Davranche (AL Montreuil)
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