Intervenir au Rwanda

Juppé, Alain

16 juin 1994

19940616

Point de vue

Intervenir au Rwanda

JuppeLiberation16juin1994.pdf

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Libération

Article de journal

FR

According to Alain Juppé, "France will have no complacency towards the assassins or their sponsors. France, the only Western country represented at ministerial level at the extraordinary session of the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, demands that those responsible for these genocides be brought to justice".

In the aftermath of the Restricted Council where François Mitterrand decided, in agreement with the government, to launch a military operation in Rwanda, Alain Juppé, Minister of Foreign Affairs, published in Liberation a forum in which the duplicity of this operation. To write that France "demands that all those responsible for these genocides be tried" is to signify the will to do justice, but to speak of "responsible for these genocides" means that, for France, several genocides are in progress and therefore that the RPF is in the process of massacring the Hutu. This allegation has never been proven, while the genocide of the Tutsi has been recognized. Alain Juppé is only repeating the accusation of the French soldiers, such as Admiral Lanxade, who said in the Restricted Council on April 13, 1994 that "now it is the Tutsis who will massacre the Hutus in Kigali". The consequence of these remarks is that the military operation in preparation, supposedly humanitarian, aims to support the Hutu and to fight the RPF, which, according to Juppé's views, is engaged in "a merciless struggle for power " and "has chosen total and uncompromising victory". On the other side, he spares the Rwandan government and its army, accusing only the militias for the genocide of the Tutsi. He does not tolerate any suspicion against French diplomacy and claims that "France has never supported one Rwandan ethnicity against another", which is contradicted by the notes of the particular Chiefs of Staff , Admiral Lanxade then General Quesnot, to François Mitterrand where they equate the Tutsi with the enemy. At the height of cynicism, Juppé argues that "on the contrary, we support the moderates who, despite the persecutions to which they have been subjected, have survived". In reality, France has abandoned them to the Hutu killers whose leaders it has always supported. Thus, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, Prime Minister, was assassinated a few hundred meters from the French Embassy without Ambassador Jean-Michel Marlaud offering her protection. The former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Boniface Ngulinzira, negotiator of the peace agreements, was massacred after being refused an evacuation by the French soldiers of Operation Amaryllis acting on orders from Marlaud. The latter, whom Juppé says was mandated by him, participated in the formation of the government in violation of the Arusha peace accords which Juppé presents as the only basis for a political settlement. This point of view is in complete contradiction with that which the same Juppé expressed orally before the National Assembly on May 18, 1994. The refusal in July 1994 to arrest those responsible for the massacres shows that these calls by Juppé for justice do not were mere words to cover up a military operation intended to prevent the RPF from achieving its objectives of pursuing the assassins.