Conseil restreint

Lussy, Xavier (de)

29 juin 1994

19940629

Conseil restreint

ConseilRestreint29juin1994MaquisTutsi.pdf

155223 bytes

3

Présidence de la République (fr)

FM

Procès-verbal de réunion

FR

While on June 29, survivors were still resisting their killers in government areas, particularly in the Bisesero region, where French special forces watched the massacre without moving, Admiral Lanxade declared: "Clashes continue between Hutu militias and Tutsi maquis. We are looking for ways to avoid the resumption of massacres". This inaction by the French in the face of the ongoing massacre seems to respond to an order not to intervene in the conflict between the government forces and the RPF. Showing consummate skill, Admiral Lanxade confuses genocide with war. It reverses the roles of killers and victims. In the "Tutsi zone", "they emptied". "Tutsi area becomes Tutsiland". How better to conceal the ongoing ethnic cleansing operation in the government zone than to accuse the RPF of it in the zone it liberated? He reaches the pinnacle of deception by claiming that the corpses transported by the Nyabarongo/Akagera river to Lake Victoria are the victims of the RPF. Since 1963, the killers had been throwing the corpses of the Tutsi into these rivers, tributaries of the Nile, so that they would return to where they came from, as Léon Mugesera said in his famous speech in 1992. François Mitterrand's duplicity shines through when he says blandly: "Before the assassination of President Habyarimana, I had not been told of any drama inside the country". According to Alain Juppé, Minister of Foreign Affairs, "it is not acceptable to approve an exclusively Tutsi regime". Declaring that "we must remain in contact with the RPF which cannot imagine a total seizure of the country", his objective turns out to be to prevent a total victory of the RPF.