France Is Partially Responsible in Rwandan Genocide: Macron Acknowledges

The President of France Emmanuel Macron on Thursday has publicly accepted that France is partially responsible for the Rwandan genocide, which is deemed as a historic acknowledgment that could possibly mark a watershed moment in the already delicate relationship amid both nations.

Public address on the Rwandan genocide

While giving a speech at the memorial which was held for the dead victims during the Rwandan genocide in the capital city Kigali, President Macron has stated that France had previously ignored warning messages regarding the genocide in the year 1994 and has been bearing the responsibility which has been overwhelming, which ended in the worst.

He said that only those people who were actually present at the time of the Rwandan genocide and suffered through the night would be able to forgive him for the grave mistake he made back then at the time.

Although the President of France has maintained that his country had not taken any participation in the ethnic Hutu extremism, who had murdered almost 800,000 individuals, out of which most people had been the members of the community of Tutsi minority, amid the killing spree which went on for consecutive 100 days.

France, along with other developed countries in the West, failed to intervene in the Rwandan genocide, partly also due to the relations of France with the President of Rwandan Paul Kagame, who was born in one of the Tutsi family and have become dominated in the region due to escalated tensions.

In the year 2010, the President of France at that time, Nicolas Sarkozy have become the first leader of the country to be able to visit the country of Rwanda following the brutal Rwandan genocide. Though President Sarkozy has acknowledged the mistakes he had made in the past at the time of his visit, the government of Rwanda has maintained that the country of France had yet to fully confront its role in the killings of 1994.

President Macron, who was only 16 years old at the time of the Rwandan genocide, has a president at the time to try to improve the relations of France with Rwanda and has also ordered for a thorough examination in the responsibility to France in the mass murdering of Tutsi community.

President Macron’s apology

A report that had been released in the month of March has concluded that France is responsible for the events which occurred in the year 1994 at the time of the Rwandan genocide but had not been complicit in any of the crimes which occurred at the time. Some of the content of the same report was shared by President Macron in his speech on Thursday.

During his speech, President Macron stopped short of his full-length apology, which is an omission that had disappointed many of the Rwandans, according to Phil Clark, who is a professor for the subject of international politics currently working in London at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Still, President Kagame has said that he still welcomed the words of the French leaders he spoke the truth, which is bigger and much more valuable than a scripted apology.

Prof. Clark has said that the positive response from the government of Rwanda, after numerous years of their tumultuous relationship and the French role in the Rwandan genocide, and most likely indicates that a new phase of pragmatism in the world shaken by the COVID-19 infection, which has also become marked with declining aid from other foreign countries and the struggling economic condition of the nations.

There is an ongoing political game on a bigger aspect, which is seen by Rwanda as an opportunity to make France a very resourceful partner for themselves in terms of diplomatic ties on the United Nations Security Council, military partnership, and economic ties.

President Kagame, who was at the height of the Rwandan genocide, which was led forward by the Rwandan Patriotic Front into the Rwanda nation from Uganda and has chased many of the responsible perpetrators into the region of Congo, and is currently very popular among the citizens of his country.

After decades of being in a powerful position, he has been marked by a stifling of any sort of opposition, which is often on the concerning grounds that dissenters are deniers of the Rwandan genocide, or it is possible that they would instigate another possible massive genocide.

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