from the breakdown of relations to the hope of “normalization”

It’s a historic visit. After Nicolas Sarkozy in 2010, Emmanuel Macron is the second French president to go to Rwanda in an official setting. Thursday, May 27, he is due to go to the Kigali Genocide Museum, where the remains of 250,000 victims are buried, and to deliver a speech for the first time on memory issues and the role of France between 1990 and 1994.

Twenty-seven years after the genocide of the Tutsi, which according to the UN claimed 800,000 lives in the spring of 1994, the Elysee hopes to achieve a “Normalization of relations” with Kigali and put an end to the tensions which poisoned the relations between Paul Kagame, who has presided over Rwanda since 2000, and the French leaders.

• François Mitterrand: blindness at the top of the state

By concluding to “A set of heavy and overwhelming responsibilities” of France in the genocide of the Tutsi without however proving its complicity, the report of the commission of historians gathered around Vincent Duclert demonstrated the ideological blindness of François Mitterrand and his staff.

At the end of the genocide, in July 1994, Rwanda was a devastated country, bloodless in human and economic terms. However, at the Franco-African summit held in Biarritz in November 1994, Kigali was not invited. And while in his speech François Mitterrand evokes “Genocide”, the transcript given to the press mentions “Genocides”.

Behind what might look like a “shell” hides a misunderstanding which implies that the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a politico-military movement made up of Tutsi and led by Paul Kagame, committed another genocide by liberating the country. This confusion between the singular and the plural will poison relations between the two countries, which are already very tense.

• Jacques Chirac: the breakdown of diplomatic relations

During a visit to Paris in February 2003, Paul Kagame met Jacques Chirac. “Relationships are not as bad as they used to be”, then concedes the Rwandan leader. But a storm is rising on the judicial front, with a complex case: the causes of the attack committed on April 6, 1994 against the plane of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, an attack which served as the trigger for the genocide.

Seized following a complaint lodged by the families of the French crew of the aircraft, the examining magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguière accuses Paul Kagame and the RPF of being responsible for the attack. This accusation amounts to considering that the Tutsi would have in a way caused the genocide of which they were victims. In the eyes of the survivors, it is revisionism.

In the Kigali stadium, on April 7, 2004, when commemorating the 10 years of the genocide, Paul Kagame denounced the attitude “Shameful” of the international community during the tragedy. “As for the French, their role is obvious, he adds. They knowingly trained and armed government troops. They knew they were going to commit genocide… ”

In November 2006, Judge Bruguière closed his investigation into the attack of April 6, 1994 and signed nine arrest warrants against relatives of the Rwandan president. The latter replied by severing diplomatic relations with France and publishing, two years later, a report with damning conclusions: the French State “Played an active part in the preparation and realization of the genocide”.

• Nicolas Sarkozy: the recognition of “political errors”

“These accusations inevitably make me uncomfortable”, had confided Nicolas Sarkozy at World, a few months before being elected to the Elysée, in May 2007: “As soon as I was elected, I took an interest in Rwanda. My conviction is that France is not guilty of genocide but that it made serious mistakes in 1994. ” On several occasions, Nicolas Sarkozy meets Paul Kagame and “It matches between us”, he said. Diplomatic relations are restored.

The French president intends to go further by organizing a trip to Rwanda in February 2010, despite the advice of a large part of the political class. He went to the Kigali Genocide Memorial and then, at a press conference, spoke of a “Defeat for humanity”, “political errors” and an “Form of blindness” who had “Absolutely dramatic consequences”. A few months later, Paul Kagame was received at the Elysee Palace, but many parliamentarians refused to meet him or shake his hand.

• François Hollande: between clashes and goodwill

François Hollande and the Rwandan head of state meet for the first time at a Europe-Africa summit in Brussels, in early April 2014. “Paul Kagame was in a constructive approach, tells the French president to World. The issue of genocide was not directly addressed. “

But a few days later, in an interview with the magazine Young Africa, the Rwandan leader castigates again “France’s direct role in the political preparation for the genocide and the latter’s participation in its very execution”. Consequence: the presence in Kigali of the Keeper of the Seals, Christiane Taubira, for the commemorations is canceled. On April 7, 2014, Paul Kagame returned to the charge: “No country is powerful enough, even if it thinks it is, to change the facts”, he declares in English. Before concluding, in French this time: “After all, the facts are stubborn. “

The months go by, the bonds are slowly being renewed. To clarify the role of France in Rwanda, François Hollande announces the declassification of part of the archives of the presidency. It also strengthens the means of justice to track down genocidal refugees in France and three of them are condemned.

• Emmanuel Macron: normalization on the move?

Paul Kagame and Emmanuel Macron met for the first time on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, in September 2017, and met a few months later in India during a summit on solar energy. In March 2018, Paul Kagame was invited to the Elysée. The normalization of relations is underway “Without setting a finish line”, assures a relative of the president.

It notably involves the support of France for the candidacy of the former Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs Louise Mushikiwabo at the head of the International Organization of the Francophonie (OIM), by the creation of the Duclert commission, with a total openness State archives, and by strengthening police resources, which will allow the arrest of Félicien Kabuga, considered to be the financier of the genocide. On the judicial level, the Paris Court of Appeal ordered, in July 2020, a dismissal in the investigation of Judge Bruguière and denounced an investigation rich in “Lies, reversals and manipulations”.

Now is the time for standardization? Part of the answer is expected in this speech at the Genocide Memorial which, according to the Elysee, will first be addressed to “Victims of the genocide, but also to the survivors”, “in a special solemnity”. The question of apologies, formulated or not in the name of France, is obviously on everyone’s mind. As for diplomatic warming, it should be sealed by the announcement of the appointment of a French ambassador to Kigali next summer. The position has been vacant since 2015.