The Paris court on Friday acquitted journalist Natacha Polony, who was being sued by several associations for contesting the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda (in 1994), a first in France. Seeing in his words a challenge to the existence of the genocide results “from an extrapolation of the remarks in question”, considered the court.
Since 2017, the law on the freedom of the press punishes the fact of denying, minimizing or trivializing in an outrageous way all the genocides recognized by France and not only that of the Jews during the Second World War.
Great excitement after his remarks, in March 2018
The 47-year-old journalist was prosecuted for remarks made on March 18, 2018 on France Inter. The editorial director of the weekly Marianne had then evoked the genocide in Rwanda by considering “necessary to look in the face what happened at that time and which ultimately has nothing to do with a distinction between the bad guys and the good guys”.
“Unfortunately, we are typically in the kind of case where we had bastards facing other bastards (…) There were not on one side the good guys and on the other the bad guys in this story” , she added.
These remarks had caused a great stir and prompted the association for the support of victims of the Rwandan genocide Ibuka France to file a complaint with a civil action. The Mrap and the Rwandan Community of France joined it on the bench of the civil parties.
“Clumsy” words but no Holocaust denial
According to the court, “her remarks, which she did not have the opportunity to explain (…) and which are immediately followed by the affirmation (…) in a clear manner of the existence of the genocide , cannot be analyzed in isolation, without considering those to whom they applied and the denials made by the defendant as to the intention attributed to him”.
During the hearing, the 1er and March 2, Natacha Polony had explained that by the terms “bastards”, she referred to the leaders, not to the population, and to the “crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF, mainly Tutsi) of Paul Kagame committed before, during and after genocide”.
The public prosecutor had described the columnist’s remarks as “clumsy words” but had seen “no negationism” in them.