Le rapport des juges Trévidic et Poux sur l’attentat du 6 avril 1994 contre l’avion du président rwandais Habyarimana, qui a été l’élément déclencheur du génocide des Tutsis, est formel : contrairement à ce qu’avait affirmé le juge Bruguière, ce ne sont pas les Tutsis du Front patriotique rwandais (FPR) qui en sont les auteurs.

Dès lors, la question se pose : qui sont les responsables de l’attentat ? Si le rapport n’en apporte pas la preuve matérielle, il désigne implacablement les extrémistes du “Hutu Power”. Ceux-là même qui, quelques heures à peine après l’attentat, érigèrent des barrages dans Kigali et distribuèrent des listes préétablies de Tutsis à éliminer comme des “Inyenzi” (“cafards”), mettant ainsi en application le plan génocidaire. Ceux-là même qui, au sein de la garde présidentielle, des forces armées et de la gendarmerie rwandaises, qui furent les fers de lance du génocide, reçurent formation et soutien de la part de militaires, gendarmes, coopérants et mercenaires français, sur ordres des plus hautes autorités de l’Etat.

Les discours négationnistes relayés, notamment en France, par des responsables politiques, hauts fonctionnaires, pseudo-historiens ou enquêteurs autoproclamés, s’écroulent.

L’écrire confine au ridicule mais le négationnisme, dans ce cas comme dans les autres, n’en est pas dépourvu : non, les Tutsis ne sont pas responsables du génocide qui a vu massacrer 800 000 des leurs. Non seulement parce qu’un attentat ne fait pas un génocide, mais également parce que les responsables de cet attentat ne sont pas Tutsis.

Pour faire admettre cette évidence pour ce qu’elle est, il aura fallu déconstruire, consciencieusement, pièce après pièce, un dossier Bruguière dont le manque de fiabilité des témoins-clés, qui sont revenus sur leurs déclarations, l’inexistence d’éléments matériels, Bruguière ne s’étant jamais rendu au Rwanda, et la fausseté des conclusions, en font plus un document de propagande qu’un rapport digne de la justice française.

Pourquoi donc Bruguière a-t-il élaboré ce rapport avant de mettre en examen plusieurs proches de Kagamé et de provoquer ainsi une rupture des relations diplomatiques entre la France et le Rwanda entre 2006 et 2010 ? S’il est difficile d’apporter des réponses définitives à cette question sans confondre conjectures et certitudes, il est par contre aisé de décrire les conséquences qu’a entraînées le rapport Bruguière.

Tout d’abord, il a renforcé les discours négationnistes, en permettant à de nombreux responsables politiques ou intellectuels de diffuser les thèses négationnistes de la responsabilité des Tutsis dans leur propre génocide, du “double génocide” ou encore de “l’autogénocide” du peuple rwandais contre lui-même dans une supposée explosion de violence tribale. Pierre Péan a ainsi soutenu la thèse du double génocide en partant de la supposée culpabilité de Kagamé, alors chef du FPR, dans l’attentat du 6 avril, qu’il affirmait avoir prouvée après une “enquête” tout aussi inconsistante que celle de son ami Bruguière.

Ensuite, il a apporté des protections à certains hommes politiques et très hauts fonctionnaires français qui portent une lourde responsabilité dans la préparation et la perpétration du génocide. En effet, certains ont, dans les années précédant 1994, soutenu les extrémistes hutus qui étaient en train de préparer le génocide. Certains ont, pendant que le génocide se déroulait, apporté un soutien sans faille au gouvernement génocidaire formé à l’ambassade de France, sous l’égide de l’ambassadeur Marlaud, le soir même du lancement du génocide.

Il a également permis de soustraire l’ancien gendarme de l’Elysée, le capitaine Paul Barril, à la mission d’information parlementaire de 1998. Pourtant, les éléments de réponse qu’il peut apporter à certaines questions devraient être particulièrement intéressants. A la veille du 6 avril 1994, il est vu à Kigali, où il confie être présent le 7. Où était-il le 6 au soir, au moment de l’attentat ? Le rapport Trévidic et Poux indique que les Forces armées rwandaises, dont le camp est selon toute vraisemblance le lieu de départ du missile qui a abattu le Falcon 50 de Habyarimana, n’avaient pas la formation militaire suffisante pour tirer le missile. Qui a tiré ? S’il faut bien évidemment le prouver, de lourds soupçons se portent naturellement vers les hommes de celui qui fut, pendant le génocide, un des vecteurs du soutien de l’Elysée au gouvernement génocidaire à qui il a fourni armes, propagande, comme dans la rocambolesque affaire de la vraie-fausse boîte noire, et mercenaires.

Il a enfin protégé de nombreux génocidaires, souvent exfiltrés en France grâce à l’armée ou à l’Eglise, qui ont pu jouir d’une impunité totale jusqu’à il y a quelque deux années.
Plus de dix sept années après le génocide, le rapport des juges Trévidic et Poux est donc salvateur, car, malgré toutes les tentatives de diversion, il fait progresser la vérité historique et la justice. Comme le disait Elie Wiesel en 1987 lors de sa déposition au procès de Klaus Barbie : “Le tueur tue deux fois, la première en tuant, et la seconde en essayant d’effacer les traces de son meurtre (…). La seconde ne serait pas de sa faute, mais de la nôtre.” C’est cette recherche de la vérité qui permet de faire reculer le négationnisme, donc d’honorer la mémoire des morts, d’apaiser les souffrances des rescapés et de leurs descendants, et d’apporter un supplément de lucidité et de repères moraux aux générations actuelles et futures.

Few events have been the subject of as many rumours and lies as the assassination on 6 April 1994 of Rwanda’s President Juvénal Habyarimana. We may never know the identity of the assassins who fired the two missiles that blew his jet apart as it came in to land at Kigali International Airport; yet this one key event signalled the targeted elimination of Rwanda’s political opposition, and triggered the genocide of the Tutsi people.

Since that night there has been a ceaseless propaganda war, with each side blaming the other for what happened. One version is that the rebel Tutsi RPF assassinated the Hutu president in a cynical bid to oust his regime; another version blames Hutu extremists who, faced with the possibility of power-sharing with the Tutsi minority, carried out a coup d’etat in order to create a “pure Hutu” state.

This is why the publication of an expert investigation into the aircraft crash in Paris today will have such tremendous repercussions. After 18 years it has essentially settled the central question of who was morally responsible for triggering the genocide.

In some 400 detailed pages, including the conclusions of six experts who visited the crash site in 2010, the report has provided scientific proof that, as the plane made a final approach, the assassins were waiting in the confines of Kanombe military camp – the highly fortified home of Rwanda’s French-trained elite unit known as the Presidential Guard, and which is directly under the flight path. This secure military barracks would have been inaccessible to RPF rebels, a point made some years ago in a report on the crash produced by the Rwandan government. The government will feel vindicated, but it will be keen nonetheless to consign this episode to the history books: its priority remains to create a united society.

In France the report is likely to cause considerable embarrassment – certainly and most immediately for Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, an investigating magistrate who first looked at the assassination in 1997 and was convinced the missiles were fired by an RPF hit-squad from a farm near the airport. In his own report he named current Rwandan government officials, including the head of Rwanda’s army, as being responsible, and in 2006, amid worldwide publicity, he issued nine international warrants for their arrest. There was a storm of outrage in Kigali and diplomatic ties with France were broken, although there has since been a rapprochement.

But the Bruguière report did not stand up to the slightest scrutiny. He had relied on the testimony of former RPF soldiers who claimed firsthand knowledge but who eventually retracted their testimony. A new investigation by Judge Marc Trévidic and his colleague Nathalie Poux began in 2007. Trévidic’s reputation was as a fiercely independent investigator: Paris Match called him a “judge who defies state power”.

It is ironic, given the murky past of France in Rwandan affairs – and France was the staunchest of allies to the Hutu regime in Kigali – that the truth of the assassination seems to now reside in the hands of French lawyers. There are certainly implications for those French military officials and politicians who were involved in the foreign policy towards Rwanda in 1994, and the report will do nothing for the reputation of President François Mitterrand, who ran the secretive Africa unit at the Elysée Palace and who steadfastly supported the Hutu regime. France’s policy towards Rwanda has for years remained unaccountable to either parliament or the press.

This week’s report will certainly give pause for thought for defence teams at the international criminal court for Rwanda, where the Bruguière report has become the cornerstone in many cases. Rwandans facing genocide charges have for years accused the RPF of the assassination, claiming the Tutsis were killed not as the result of a conspiracy to murder but in spontaneous revenge attacks by Hutus devastated at their president’s murder by Tutsis.

In spite of the new information, there remain some difficult questions. On the night of the crash there were senior French military officers living in the Kanombe camp embedded with the Rwandan elite units. As UN peacekeepers were prevented from getting to the wreckage these French officers are said to have taken away the cockpit voice recorder and black box.

And no one has yet identified a group of French military officers who, within hours of the crash, had approached the commander of the UN Mission for Rwanda, offering him a team of French aviation experts to enquire into the crash, an offer Dallaire immediately refused.

Sooner or later the truth will emerge about how the misleading Bruguière report came to be written, and why over so many years so many people were taken in by it. The story is far from over.

The word “hunger” connotes two different experiences: deprivation and desire. In our two African countries, and in the developing world in general, nearly 1 billion people experience a severe lack of food and yearn to lift themselves out of poverty. For our world to be stable, it must become free of the worst forms of deprivation. For our world to be more just, the desires of the poor must be fulfilled.

A decade ago, the world agreed to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 as part of the UN millennium development goals. World leaders gathered in New York last week to renew their commitments for addressing global hunger, even as this goal is slipping away. In fact, due to the steep rise in food prices from late 2007 to early 2009 and the recent global economic crisis, global hunger has actually increased. Today, one out of every six people on earth is undernourished.

Our countries are struggling with multiple interlinked challenges: as food prices turn volatile, poor households’ access to food weakens; as rainfall and temperature patterns change, small farmers lose yields; and when water is scarce and soil is eroding, yields drop. The rate of growth of yields is falling below critical levels for the first time in three decades. Together, these trends make food access and production more uncertain. As this happens, small farmers and people living in poverty who depend on agriculture, especially smallholders, are the most vulnerable.

We know the solutions to our systemic challenges: our farmers need improved inputs, including seeds as well as improved soils; they need roads that will connect them to markets; they need agribusiness credit and private sector investments to spur growth; they need facilities to reduce their estimated 40–60% post-harvest losses and they need training and technology to cope with climate change. Most of all, they are yearning for results. If we can boost agricultural productivity, we can accelerate economic growth and raise incomes for communities, countries and our continent as a whole.

As our governments take action, we need the international community to do its part as well. A green revolution in Africa depends on locally driven solutions plus reliable donor support. Neither ingredient is sufficient on its own – both are indispensable.

That is why Africans, on whose shoulders the responsibility of transforming agriculture rightly falls, have devised a powerful initiative to support smallholder farmers using the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) process. Through CAADP, African nations have developed and are developing comprehensive agriculture strategies and sector investment programmes and have pledged to devote 10% of our national budgets to agriculture. Between 2007 and 2009, Rwanda has increased its investment in agriculture by 30%, and in Sierra Leone, agriculture has gone from 1.6% of the budget to 9.9% in 2010. More than 20 African countries have adopted CAADP.

A year ago, world leaders gathered at L’Aquila and pledged $22bn towards food security and to help reverse three decades of declining donor support for agriculture. The G20 in Pittsburgh called for a multilateral fund to scale up assistance in the agriculture sector. To advance this commitment, the United States, Canada, Spain, South Korea and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Global Agriculture and Food Security Programme as a new fund to help the world’s poorest farmers. Our two countries were among the first five recipients of $50m grants from this fund.

In Rwanda, two-thirds of smallholder farms are located on steep hillsides, where soil erosion is a major problem. Torrential rains wash away fertilisers and improved seeds before their benefit can be felt. This new fund is supporting an ambitious hillside terracing initiative so that farmers – the vast majority of whom are women – can protect their land, have better yields and generate more income to care for their families. In Sierra Leone, the fund is helping small-scale farmers move from subsistence to commercial farming, including investing in the necessary infrastructure to facilitate the processing, packaging, storage and marketing of agricultural surpluses triggered by commercialisation.

For our two countries, this fund, managed by the World Bank, has proved to be one of the few sources of new and additional financing for agriculture that is aligned with our needs and priorities. The fund reflects the international community’s will to act in a co-ordinated manner on an issue that is fundamental to poor countries’ growth, development and stability. With governance of the fund shared by developed and developing countries, it demonstrates a mutual commitment to sustain our focus on agriculture until the job is done.

Yet, six months after its launch, with a lack of additional pledges, the fund’s sustainability is at risk. Next month, several African countries that have completed their comprehensive agriculture strategies will be approaching the fund for support. Unless new donors come forward, most of these countries will be turned away.

African countries like ours are leading by example. Now, donors must keep their side of the bargain. We urge broader and deeper support for the global agriculture fund. Let our collective action be sustained until we end food insecurity. Let it be inspired by the aspirations of a billion people.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, made a hurried and unexpected visit to Kigali last week to persuade Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, not to carry out a threat to withdraw all Rwandan peacekeepers from UN duty – including troops protecting civilians in Darfur. The UN delegation would be well aware of the security council’s shameful decision to pull its peacekeepers out of Rwanda in 1994, at the height of the genocide of the Tutsi people. It was Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front that eventually brought the genocide to an end.

A withdrawal of Rwandan troops would cripple UN efforts in Darfur. But it would be wrong to underestimate the Kagame threat, for it comes in a furious response to a leaked UN draft report that suggests that this same Rwandan army may itself have committed genocide in the course of a “relentless pursuit” of Hutu refugees in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo from 1996 to 1998. There is a note of caution in the report: the accusation is “unresolved” and can only be decided by a court. But the terrible irony of the use of the “g” word in relation to Rwandan troops was lost on no one.

Although the accusations against Rwanda are not particularly new, what is significant is that they are contained in a UN report which has taken several years to prepare. The Mapping Exercise, as it was called, was created in 2007 and began its work a year later. It was intended to provide an inventory of the most serious human rights abuses between 1993 and 2003, identifying potential leads and sources of information for further investigations should trials follow.

In its 500 pages it describes more than 600 serious violations by perpetrators from the armies of Burundi, Uganda, Angola, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Congolese rebel groups, and Rwandan Hutu Power génocidaires. It was, however, the allegation against the Rwandan army that drew the most media attention.

Even as Ban Ki-moon was expressing his disappointment at the leak, Rwanda’s foreign minister, Louise Mushikiwabo, was calling the report “insane”, “fatally flawed” and “irresponsible”. She reminded reporters how the UN had “deliberately turned its back on the Rwandan people” in 1994.

Whoever leaked this document was distracting attention from another abject UN failure when, only days before in Congo’s North Kivu province, rebels – including remnants of Hutu Power forces responsible for the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi – had systematically gang-raped hundreds of women and children. Atul Khare, the deputy head of UN peacekeeping, later admitted that the UN’s forces in the DRC had failed.

The trial of strength between the UN and Rwanda has led to rumours that the final report on the DRC – due for publication on 1 October – will eventually be amended. The UN high commissioner for human rights, Navanethem Pillay, has apparently been asked to conduct a legal review of the report’s use of the word genocide before publication. Pillay has promised in the foreword that the people of the DRC would find justice and pledged the help of her office in what would be “an important journey towards a truly sustainable peace” – with the “support of the international community”.

The story of what happened in Congo remains massively incomplete. It is inappropriate, or so the Belgian journalist Colette Braeckman wrote last week, to simply blame African states. Braeckman, an expert in the region, says the Congo wars have depended upon tolerance and compromise within the UN security council. They have also depended on the exploitation of mineral reserves and the defence of foreign investment – they are about wealth and influence in Africa.

Braeckman discloses how at one stage the Hutu Power forces in the DRC had received military assistance from Serbian mercenaries hired by the French. She includes a startling claim that the US had provided satellite intelligence to Rwandan forces in order to show the location of Hutu refugees in sprawling forests.

The 1994 genocide and the subsequent massive exodus of more than one million Rwandans – the “Hutu nation”, as one military leader called them – into the neighbouring DRC contributed to the destabilisation of an entire region. There have been 16 years of war, human deprivation, rape and misery, with untold and unimaginable brutality, and an incalculable number of victims. It is not over.

No one is quite sure what to make of Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame. Since his re-election this month with 93 percent of the vote, the United States has reacted warily. The White House cited “a series of disturbing events” in a statement that pointedly congratulated “the people of Rwanda,” not Kagame himself. “Democracy is about more than holding elections,” the statement said.

This is a step in the right direction. The United States and others must continue supporting Rwandans without directly boosting Kagame.

Why is this uncertain embrace necessary? After all, Kagame has made his country one of Africa’s development stars. The economy is growing, the streets are clean and secure, corruption is under control, and women enjoy a prominent role. Between 2000, when Kagame took office, and 2008, Rwanda’s total economic output and per capita income more than doubled. The primary school completion rate rose from just over one-fifth to just over half. Life expectancy increased from 43 years to 50.

Kagame is also positioning Rwanda strongly for future growth. The country was named the top reformer in the World Bank’s Doing Business 2010 ranking, vaulting up 76 places from its 2009 ranking. Rwanda also gained ground in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, moving from 102nd place in 2008 to 89th in 2009. Clearly work remains to be done, but the trends are positive.

Kagame has become a much-feted figure. In 2009 alone, according to his campaign Web site, he was honored by the Clinton Global Initiative, the United States Fund for Unicef and Florida State University, among others.

But a whiff of repression now lingers over Kagame’s record, giving many supporters second thoughts. In the months before the presidential election, the deputy leader of an opposition party and the deputy editor of an opposition newspaper were killed; a prominent politician who intended to challenge Kagame was arrested; other opposition parties were excluded from the election; and a former head of the army and Kagame critic was shot in South Africa, where he had fled. (The government has denied involvement in the violent incidents.)

Given Rwanda’s social and economic success, why should Kagame fear real democratic competition? His answer is that robust political debate could imperil Rwanda’s stability, still fragile after the 1994 genocide. As he wrote recently in the Financial Times, “Those who look in from outside ignore the fact that competitive democracy requires sustained social cohesion.” Ethnic tensions are indeed not fully healed in Rwanda, where the minority Tutsi (some 15 percent of the population) govern the majority Hutu. Avoiding the prospect of further atrocities is clearly a legitimate concern.

Many, though, believe that Kagame is scared less of renewed conflict than of plots against him by military officers in his own circle. This is a decidedly less honorable rationale for repression.

Kagame’s real intentions may not be clear until his term ends in 2017; according to the Rwanda constitution, he cannot run again. But the United States and others concerned about Rwanda’s trajectory need not stand idly by until then. Instead, they should de-personalize their policy by finding ways to help the country without strengthening or flattering its leader.

Foreign assistance is an obvious lever since it makes up some one-fifth of Rwanda’s economy. Donors should prioritize aid to civil society groups independent of the government, such as nongovernmental organizations, political parties, media outlets and others in a position to foster genuine political dialogue. The U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation’s threshold program for Rwanda is already assisting some such groups. If they give any support to the government itself, donors should seek ways to ensure that it builds institutional capacity for the country’s continued progress, not political capacity for Kagame’s continued power.

Another part of this de-personalization policy involves recognition for Kagame on the world stage. Universities, non-profits, and others should not add to his list of honors until he has firmly established his commitment to full democracy. Foreign leaders also should keep their relations with Kagame correct but not effusive. This means no visits by Kagame to the White House or analogous residences, and no visits by presidents or prime ministers to Kigali. It also means publicly pointing out Kagame’s flaws.

Kagame himself can help clear the air. He should ensure robust investigations of the pre-election violence, protect freedoms of assembly and speech, and declare unambiguously that he will not seek a constitutional change to extend his stay in power.

Even given recent events, Kagame is not an unmitigated despot. But his limits on freedom are still dangerous. A constrained political climate punctuated by violence is hardly the way to preserve stability in a country still recovering from genocide and in a region full of conflict and the potential for more. Such a climate risks undoing Rwanda’s progress and tarnishing the legacy that this president has so carefully built.

In 2009 I visited North Kivu in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, a region that for decades has been locked in a seemingly intractable conflict. Peacemaking had for a long time seemed an impossible task. Monusco, the UN force deployed to the region – lacking proper helicopter lift capacity and struggling with the vast and impenetrable jungle – had been unable to fulfil even the most basic duties of civilian protection.

The state capital, Goma, a town struck by conflict and natural disasters, swarming with eager NGOs and UN staff flitting from Land Cruisers to pizza restaurants, is almost a Conradian caricature. It lies just a few short kilometres from the border with Rwanda, and it was through that porous boundary in 1994 that Rwandan refugees poured after the genocide. The same ethnic, political and economic divisions that sparked those massacres span that border, and have contributed to years of persistent violence.

Last year, however, there was optimism. After years of colluding with destabilising forces and running what has been described as a proxy war in the Kivus, Rwanda had come on side. The Rwandan armed forces joined an offensive in North Kivu to dislodge the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda, an insurgent group once a proxy of Kinshasa and formed of local militias and Hutus fleeing retribution post-genocide.

With entente in the air, the development community began to show renewed optimism. Western diplomats that I spoke with at the time were adamant that it was their new approach that had triumphed, the “3D” process combining defence, diplomacy and development that was forged in the aftermath of the invasion of Afghanistan.

In stark contrast to the eastern DRC, Rwanda has been transformed in the 15 years since the end of the genocide. The country has registered year-on-year economic growth, opened up for investment and integrated into its regional community. Furthermore, the country has begun to act as a constructive interlocutor in the region and in African affairs. Central to this transformation has been the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame.

Under Kagame’s leadership, the Rwandan Patriotic Front took Kigali, the capital, and ended the genocide in July 1994. Six years later, he was elected president and put Rwanda on a path where, a decade on, its narrative has been decoupled from its tragic history. For the past couple of years in particular, Rwanda has been the exemplary case for Africa’s resurgence.

True, there are several big and stable economies that better demonstrate the opportunities on the continent, but Rwanda was the little country that, without its own natural resources and despite its past, showed that the right policies, the right ideas and the right leadership could unleash an entrepreneurial wave and transform a whole nation.

Signs at Kigali airport remind travellers that, these days, plastic bags are banned. The Hôtel des Milles Collines, of Hotel Rwanda fame, is an idyll among the eponymous Thousand Hills, broken only by the construction site next door where it is being extended. On the last Saturday of every month, whole communities come out to participate in umuganda, a community service “festival” that sees streets cleaned and personal and communal concerns discussed.

Since 2001, gacaca courts have been used to push through the process of reconciliation that has seen perpetrators and victims of the genocide work side by side in bringing the country forward. Its history has been brutal and tragic, yes, but Rwanda has transcended that history.

Politically, though, there is limited space for dissent. Kagame’s government has been characterised as a benign autocracy masquerading as a democracy. This was a description that I did not previously agree with. We have a habit of making exactly this assumption – an African leader who appears popular cannot be so; a regime that maintains central control must be repressive. The sense that I got in the bars – and particularly in the offices – of Kigali was that this was a man with the backing of his constituents.

I interviewed Kagame in November last year. In person he is a compelling figure, quietly charismatic, articulate and adamant that the country should be judged on its ability to reform itself, that governance should not be imposed by outside powers but driven by a domestic desire for self-determination. Democracy and political inclusion were the logical end of economic development, he explained, and he was unapologetic that Rwanda is only on that path, not at the end of it.

Rwanda goes to the polls in a matter of weeks. On Wednesday, Andre Kagwa Rwisereka, a senior opposition figure, was found murdered. Two other critics of Kagame have been attacked. A few weeks ago, Jean Leonard Rugambage, a journalist, was killed. Last month, the former general Kayumba Nyamwasa was shot and wounded in South Africa. The Rwandan government denies any involvement.

This is a critical time for Rwanda. This year, there have been figures who have sought to highlight the old ethnic divisions that once tore Rwanda apart and exploit them for political gain. Managing contemporary Rwanda has meant finding a firm and rational response to these attempts without giving credence to their rhetoric. The government needed to – and initially seemed to find – just such a response.

Whoever is responsible for the most recent round of violence has created a colossal problem for Kagame’s government. Where political grievances are conflated with ethnic divisions, logic and reason are the first of many casualties.

This is a big test for how robust Rwanda’s reconciliation process has been. Will all this unravel? Doom-laden predictions in a press that almost seems to be urging the country to fail must be moderated with an understanding of the vast complexity of that country today.

Rwanda matters too much to be dismissed as an autocracy or to be branded as a place of inevitable collapse. Kagame will win this election. The manner in which he does so will define his legacy as a leader and the progress of his country.

‘When are we going to Rwanda?” my 13-year-old daughter kept asking. She wanted to go there as soon as I was asked to visit the country to show solidarity with its people. She wasn’t asking in a naive, childish way; she knew that it was a serious thing, marking the anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. Initially, the scheduling wasn’t working out, but Hannah kept on reminding me.

And so, almost a year later — thanks to her and the Aegis Trust — I’m standing in the Kigali Genocide Memorial, trying to get my head around what happened in 1994, what that means for Rwanda today and what, if anything, it might mean for the rest of us.

Sixteen years can feel like a lifetime. But when you’re facing the fallout of a genocide, as I discovered in Rwanda, it can feel like no time at all.

It’s very hard for an individual to take on the concept of a million people dying in 100 days. But as soon as you listen to one person’s story you start to relate on a human level, and you begin to realise just how devastating it was. The centre at Kigali was at its most powerful when it got personal.

A few days later I’m sitting in Winifred’s front room. Her home is a rudimentary affair, involving mud walls and a thatched roof, but it’s fairly standard in a country where, despite astonishing economic progress, most people still earn little more than £1 a day. But the emptiness in her eyes tells you that no amount of material progress will solve what’s eating this woman.

Pregnant during the genocide, Winifred gave birth after being raped, beaten and left for dead. She was unable to protect her newborn baby, and the child was dragged away and eaten by dogs. Today she has Aids from the rape, and is unable to support herself without charity, because of the loss of breadwinners in her family during the genocide.

Her son, then 10 years old, witnessed everything. He now has enormous psychological problems. It’s little wonder. In Rwanda, where psychological support is an unaffordable luxury, the need is overwhelming.

For the sake of Rwanda’s future, there is no question that reconciliation is the only way forward. At the same time, survivors such as Winifred are living almost next door to perpetrators. It’s ridiculously naive to think that a victim of the genocide can just bury what happened to them and move on. Reconciliation can’t be rushed. It’s going to take time, sensitivity, careful handling and proper education.

The danger is that with all the tragedies happening around the world, people think of the Rwandan genocide as something that’s over. From what I saw, however, it is happening; it’s not a past thing. Its consequences are clearly spilling from one generation to the next. We can’t restore what was destroyed, but we can — and we should — acknowledge that suffering and help survivors to pick up the pieces. It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Rwanda is a stunningly beautiful country, and there’s a palpable sense of hope for the future.

It doesn’t feel like a cynical place, which is incredible, considering what happened. Going to Rwanda has changed my life in some ways. The impact of those five days is still reverberating around me, and it’s become part of everything I do. Because it’s one thing to hear about things, it’s another to be there and see it and smell it, and witness the people who have lived it.

The overriding feeling I came away with was not that there was a group of awful people doing terrible things during that time, it’s that we, as human beings, have the potential to do it. You don’t have to have an evil disposition to get involved in the horrors of something like this.

People there were swept up into doing such things that, years later, they are still asking themselves why. To try to have a level of understanding of that is hugely important. It’s not about them and us. We have the potential to be those people. It’s a situation that develops that you have to be incredibly careful about.

Today we would probably still let a situation like the Rwandan genocide happen all over again somewhere else. To me, that’s the tragedy of it — and one reason why the work of genocide prevention is so important.

Alors que le ministre des affaires étrangères français, Bernard Kouchner, entreprend une tournée africaine qui l’amènera au Rwanda et en République démocratique du Congo (RDC), la situation à la frontière de ces pays ne cesse d’être volatile. Longtemps à couteaux tirés, ces deux pays se sont rapprochés en 2009, à la suite des pressions de la communauté internationale. Ce rapprochement s’est traduit par l’arrestation d’un des principaux seigneurs de guerre de la région, Laurent Nkunda, ex-leader du mouvement rebelle tutsi, le Congrès national pour la défense du peuple (CNDP), l’intégration de ses troupes dans l’armée congolaise et la traque contre la milice des Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR), sinistres héritiers du génocide rwandais de 1994, installés depuis en RDC. Cette traque a pris la forme d’opérations militaires : après une multitude d’accords inappliqués, l’usage de la force marquait un changement majeur de stratégie vis-à-vis des groupes armés.

Paradoxalement, la nouvelle donne entre Kigali et Kinshasa n’a pas produit les effets escomptés. La mise hors jeu de Laurent Nkunda ne s’est pas traduite par sa comparution devant la justice mais par son remplacement, à la tête du CNDP, par un autre soldat de fortune recherché par la Cour pénale internationale pour crimes de guerre, Bosco Ntaganda. Les opérations militaires n’ont pas permis de neutraliser les FDLR et ont eu un coût humain élevé pour les populations civiles, prises entre deux feux et victimes d’exactions de la part de l’armée comme de celle des milices rebelles. Le CNDP utilise son intégration dans les troupes congolaises aux fins d’étendre sa zone de contrôle, occuper davantage de sites miniers et organiser le retour de populations tutsies dans des territoires de l’est de la RDC qu’il juge être siens.

Ce bilan ne surprend pas, l’insincérité étant partie intégrante des processus de paix. Mais il reflète un problème plus profond : la compétition pour le foncier et les ressources minières, causes structurelles de l’instabilité dans cette région frontalière, n’est toujours pas prise en compte dans la stratégie de paix. Celle-ci continue de se développer dans deux directions : la lutte contre les FDLR et la réforme du secteur de la sécurité. La première implique, pour être efficace, d’être internationale et de frapper les réseaux financiers soutenant ce mouvement depuis l’Europe, l’Amérique et l’Extrême-Orient. La seconde est une œuvre de long, voire très long, terme qui suppose des budgets et une expertise considérables ainsi qu’une volonté politique de fer pour éradiquer la corruption dans les services de sécurité. Or les efforts déployés dans ces deux domaines sont loin d’être à la hauteur des besoins.

Engluée dans des dilemmes sécuritaires, l’actuelle stratégie de paix néglige les causes profondes de la violence : la compétition pour le foncier, sur fond de surpeuplement (le Rwanda et le Burundi ont dépassé les 300 habitants au kilomètre carré et l’Est congolais atteindra bientôt cette densité), et la lutte pour le contrôle des ressources minières, qui sont à cette région ce que le pétrole est à l’Arabie saoudite. Malgré l’accumulation d’études et de rapports, le commerce illicite des minerais continue d’alimenter les caisses des seigneurs de guerre, et le problème de l’accès à la terre reste considéré comme un sujet bon pour les spécialistes en développement mais néfaste pour les négociations de paix.

Il faut espérer que cela change vite, et l’occasion d’intégrer les problématiques de développement dans les négociations de paix est à portée de main : la conférence internationale sur la coopération économique dans la région des Grands Lacs, prévue cette année à l’initiative de la France, devra prendre ces deux sujets à bras-le-corps ; sinon elle sera pour la paix en RDC ce que la conférence de Copenhague a été pour l’environnement : un rendez-vous manqué de plus.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The joint Congo (DRC)-Rwanda military push against the Rwandan Hutu rebels has ended with scant results. Fifteen years after the Rwanda genocide and the establishment of those rebels in the eastern Congo, they have not yet been disarmed and remain a source of extreme violence against civilians. While they are militarily too weak to destabilise Rwanda, their 6,000 or more combatants, including a number of génocidaires, still present a major political challenge for consolidation of peace in the Great Lakes region. They must be disarmed and demobilised if the eastern Congo is to be stabilised.

That requires a new comprehensive strategy involving national, regional and international actors, with a clear division of labour and better coordination, so as to take advantage of the recent improvement of relations between the Congo and Rwanda, put an end to the enormous civilian suffering and restore state authority in the Congo’s eastern provinces. Its prominent components include:

• civilian protection by responsible Congolese security forces and the UN peacekeeping mission (MONUC);
• a reformed disarmament and demobilisation program involving psychological operations and informational campaigns as well as options for return or resettlement (including in third countries);
• Rwanda’s development of a list of FDLR génocidaires in eastern Congo and their subsequent isolation by sophisticated psychological operations, accompanied by talks with commanders not involved in the 1994 genocide;
• in due course, limited military actions by Congolese army units specifically trained to weaken the command and control structure of the rebels in coordination with Rwandan forces;
• legal initiatives in third countries to block propaganda and support from FDLR leaders outside the DRC;
• consolidation of Rwanda-Congo relations; and
• dividends to the people of the Great Lakes region through economic and social development.

Among the dozens of armed groups operating in the Kivus at the beginning of 2009, two had the highest military capabilities and caused the most civilian suffering: the Rwandan Hutus grouped under the Front démocratique pour la liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) and receiving some support from elements of the Congolese army, and Laurent Nkunda’s Tutsi-dominated Congrès national du peuple (CNDP), benefiting from Rwanda’s clandestine support. However, Nkunda’s personal ambition had alienated his Rwandan backers, while the total collapse of the Congolese army in front of the CNDP insurgency forced President Joseph Kabila to cut a deal with Paul Kagame, his counterpart in Kigali.

Their agreement was a significant shift of alliances in the region. In exchange for the removal of Nkunda by Kigali, Kinshasa agreed to a joint military operation against the FDLR on Congolese territory and to give key positions in the political and security institutions of the Kivus to CNDP representatives, while keeping MONUC out of the planning and implementation.

Operation “Umoja Wetu” (Our Unity) got under way on 20 January 2009. Three columns of the Rwandan army moved through North Kivu, seeking to root the rebel militia out of its main strongholds. Simultaneously the Congolese army deployed in the villages freed from FDLR control and set about to integrate combatants from the CNDP and other armed groups into its ranks. The FDLR avoided direct confrontations and dispersed in the Kivu forests. After 35 days, the results of the operation were much more modest than officially celebrated. The FDLR was only marginally and temporarily weakened in North Kivu and remained intact in South Kivu. Less than 500 FDLR combatants surrendered to MONUC to be demobilised in the first three months of 2009. Barely a month after the end of the operation, the rebels had regrouped and started to retaliate against civilians they believed had collaborated with “Umoja Wetu”.

Congo, Rwanda and MONUC have launched many initiatives for FDLR disarmament since 2002. On 9 November 2007, Kinshasa and Kigali started the Nairobi Communiqué Process, a framework for new bilateral collaboration backed by the international community that was to take care of the FDLR once and for all. But lack of goodwill and active collaboration as well as the resilience of the FDLR’s chain of command proved that traditional approaches to disarmament – whether forced or voluntary – and unilateral attempts by Congo to negotiate with the rebels could not succeed. Another lesson that should have been learned was that military action, psychological operations and informational campaigns aimed at drawing away the rebel rank and file are unlikely to produce good results unless the FDLR’s command and control structures can first be rendered ineffective, and all efforts are carefully coordinated and sequenced.

Since the Congolese national army and MONUC lack the capacity and political will to carry out an effective military operation to dismantle the FDLR chain of command, continuation of Congo-Rwanda military collaboration is also essential. The immediate priority is not a new military offensive, however – each military failure increases the suffering of ordinary Congolese. A new offensive – “Kimia II” – conducted by the Congolese national army and MONUC is currently underway. Far from disrupting the FDLR, it has failed to prevent FDLR retaliation against civilians and should be suspended. Containing, not overwhelming, the rebels and protecting civilians should be the priority, while additional resources are sought and coordination between willing partners is forged for a new kind of disarmament attempt.

A comprehensive strategy has to be developed, involving the Congo government, Rwanda, MONUC and the other international facilitators that joined in Nairobi declaration, including the African Union, the U.S. and the EU. Their political and operational inputs should be coordinated in a new FDLR disarmament mechanism that should plan both military measures and informational campaigns, as well as prepare the ground for judicial processes in the countries where FDLR political leaders have sought refuge and from which they spread the propaganda that is an important part of the hold they maintain over ordinary fighters. Without such additional efforts and new international momentum, the population of the Kivu will continue to bear the brunt of the FDLR’s presence and of the failed attempts to disarm them, and the fragile Congolese state will remain at risk.

Leer artículo completo (PDF). Disponible en Crisis Group.

THE conflict in eastern Congo over the past 12 years has been as much a surrogate war between Congo and neighboring Rwanda as an internal ethnic insurgency, as a United Nations report underscored last week. The only way to end a war that has caused five million deaths and forced millions to flee their homes in Congo’s two eastern provinces is to address the conflict’s international dimensions. The role of Rwanda — which borders the provinces and which denied the accusations in the United Nations report over the weekend — is of prime importance.

The international community has worked hard to resolve the conflicts among the various parties: the sovereign states of Rwanda and Congo as well as the assorted militias and private armies that are sponsored by these two governments and by opportunistic local warlords. But despite the deployment of 17,000 United Nations peacekeepers, and many efforts at mediation with constructive American support, the situation appears intractable.

The failure of international diplomacy is related to the economic roots of the problem, which began with the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Until the economic conundrum is addressed, there is little prospect for a solution.

The genocidal war between the majority Hutu and the minority Tutsi in Rwanda spilled into Congo, and the eastern part of that vast country has been unstable ever since. When Tutsi rebel forces took power in Rwanda in June 1994, more than a million Hutu fled to Congo, where they settled into refugee camps on the Rwandan border.

After two years of cross-border raids from the refugee camps by exiled Hutu soldiers who had participated in the genocide, the Rwandan Army attacked and destroyed the camps, with the quiet but unambiguous approval of the United States in the absence of another solution to the violence. Most of the Hutu refugees returned to Rwanda, but about 100,000 of them, along with the exiled Hutu soldiers, moved westward as a disciplined group into Congo’s interior.

The Rwandan Army pursued the escaping Hutu and caught up with them near the city of Kisangani at the headwaters of the Congo River. The refugees were massacred, but the former Hutu soldiers escaped to neighboring countries.

The move against the refugee camps was the first step in a well-planned action by Rwanda in 1996 and 1997 to overwhelm the weak Congolese Army and, with the help of the Congolese opposition, overthrow the 30-year dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko. With logistical support from Uganda and Angola, the military action succeeded in less than three months. A new government in Congo was installed under President Laurent Kabila, an exile handpicked by the Rwandans.

And from 1996 to today, the Tutsi-led Rwandan government has been in effective control of Congo’s eastern provinces of North and South Kivu. This control has been maintained through intermittent military occupation and the presence of Congolese militias financed and trained by the Rwandan Army.

During these 12 years of Rwandan control, the mineral-rich provinces have been economically integrated into Rwanda. During this time, Congo’s governments have been preoccupied with internal and external wars elsewhere, and have been unable to combat foreign control of the eastern provinces, a thousand miles from the capital, Kinshasa.

But two years ago, Congo held multiparty elections that were judged to be transparent and credible by international observers. For the first time in a decade, there was hope for stability. President Joseph Kabila (the son of Laurent Kabila, who was assassinated in 2001) turned his attention to trying to gain control of the eastern provinces.

Unfortunately, this has led to increased conflict and suffering. The main source of the current violence is an insurgent force of ethnic Congolese Tutsi commanded by Laurent Nkunda, a former general in the Congolese Army. He claims to be fighting to defend the Tutsi community from discrimination and from the former Rwandan Hutu fighters who have returned from neighboring countries and now operate in the forested hills of eastern Congo.

General Nkunda’s military operations, however, are aimed mainly against the Congolese Army’s efforts to restore Congo’s sovereignty over its eastern provinces. His force is well armed and financed by the Rwandan government. The armed Hutu presence in the provinces provides the Rwandan government with a pretext to justify its interference there.

Having controlled the Kivu provinces for 12 years, Rwanda will not relinquish access to resources that constitute a significant percentage of its gross national product. At the same time, Congo’s government is within its rights to take control of the resources there for the benefit of the Congolese people. This economic conflict must be taken into account.

This provides an opportunity for the incoming Obama administration. Acts of war and military occupation aside, there is a natural economic synergy between eastern Congo and the nations of East Africa, including Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda. The normal flow of trade from eastern Congo is to Indian Ocean ports rather than the Atlantic Ocean, which is more than a thousand miles away.

After his inauguration, Barack Obama should appoint a special negotiator who would propose a framework for an economic common market encompassing Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. This agreement would allow the free movement of people and trade. It would give Rwandan businesses continued access to Congolese minerals and forests. The products made from those raw materials would continue to be exported through Rwanda. The big change would be the payment of royalties and taxes to the Congolese government. For most Rwandan businesses, those payments would be offset by increased revenues.

In addition, the free movement of people would empty the refugee camps and would allow the densely populated countries of Rwanda and Burundi to supply needed labor to Congo and Tanzania.

If such a common market could be negotiated, Rwanda and Congo would no longer need to finance and arm militias to wage war over the natural resources in Congo’s eastern provinces. Without government backing, the fighting groups would either dissolve on their own or be integrated into legitimate armed forces.

If undertaken with enough will and persistence, an American-led mediation to create a common market in East Africa could end the war and transform the region.

Après le réquisitoire du juge Bruguière, qui fit porter la responsabilité du génocide des Tutsis du Rwanda en 1994 sur les actuelles autorités de Kigali, voici venu le temps de la réplique. Dans un rapport rendu public le 5 août, une commission rwandaise chargée, voici près de deux ans, de «rassembler les preuves montrant l’implication de l’Etat français dans le génocide» conclut à la «responsabilité» de la France dans «la préparation et l’exécution du génocide».

Les deux thèses sont aujourd’hui sur la table. Elles sont bien sûr inconciliables. Et témoignent de la profondeur d’un différend vieux de dix-huit ans qui ne cesse de se creuser pour atteindre des extrêmes. Que deux Etats s’affrontent en se portant mutuellement des accusations aussi graves – il est question de 800 000 morts – tient de l’inédit.

Paradoxalement, dans cette surenchère, la question du génocide finit presque par être occultée. Quoi qu’il en soit des possibles responsabilités connexes, ni la France, ni l’actuel régime de Kigali ne peuvent être soupçonnés d’avoir commis le génocide. Ses responsables, ceux qui l’ont directement mis en œuvre, ont été ou sont en voie d’être jugés. Désigné par l’accusation comme «le cerveau du génocide», le colonel Théoneste Bagosora, dont le procès au tribunal international d’Arusha est clos, attend le prononcé du verdict. Tenu comme le «financier du génocide», Félicien Kabuga est en fuite et recherché. Des condamnations ont été prononcées visant d’autres responsables de premier rang du génocide.

Ce n’est donc pas du génocide en lui-même qu’il est question. Ce qui est aujourd’hui en débat, ce qui justifie un tel déballage, ressort de la responsabilité politique.

L’instruction menée par le juge Bruguière en est le symptôme éclatant. Loin de l’habituel travail d’enquête factuel, les attendus des conclusions du magistrat instructeur se lisent comme une charge politique lancée au canon contre le régime de Kigali. Accusées par le magistrat français d’avoir commandité l’attentat du 6 avril 1994 qui servit de déclencheur au génocide, les actuelles autorités rwandaises devraient endosser, selon le juge, la responsabilité de l’entière tragédie.

Simple et efficace, l’accusation a porté malgré ses nombreuses faiblesses, ses raccourcis et ses partis pris. Que le régime de Kigali ait pu mettre en œuvre l’attentat du 6 avril 1994 fait partie du champ du possible, comme d’autres hypothèses. Mais réduire l’explication d’un génocide qui fit 800 000 morts en cent jours à un seul attentat paraît pour le moins léger et inconséquent.

La réaction de Kigali était donc prévisible et attendue. Tenues pour responsable du génocide par la justice française, les autorités ne pouvaient pas ne pas réagir : se taire aurait été avaliser.

Le rapport tout juste rendu public sur «l’implication de l’Etat français dans le génocide» intervient dans ce cadre. Il s’agit d’une réponse du berger à la bergère. Et cette réponse est redoutable. Elle se décompose en deux parties. La première est grave, la seconde insupportable.

Dans leur rapport, les sept membres de la commission rwandaise, juristes et historiens, reprennent d’abord l’historique de l’engagement de la France – politique militaire et diplomatique – au Rwanda tout au long des années 90. Cette remise en perspective mêle des témoignages à de nombreux documents. Le travail de la mission d’information parlementaire créée en 1998 à Paris est souvent cité. Tout comme les archives de François Mitterrand et nombre de télégrammes diplomatiques.

La politique française est globalement mise en cause pour avoir «contribué à la radicalisation ethnique du conflit». La France est accusée «d’avoir formé les milices interahamwé qui ont été le fer de lance du génocide». Dès 1992, Paris aurait engagé au Rwanda des programmes de «défense civile» alliant «l’apprentissage des différentes méthodes d’assassinat» et «un endoctrinement des miliciens à la haine ethnique». Des gendarmes français, poursuit le document, «ont contribué en toute connaissance de cause au fichage informatisé des suspects politiques et ethniques qui devaient être massacrés durant le génocide». Des soldats français auraient participé aux contrôles d’identité.

Loin de s’arrêter à ces points accablants, le rapport déroule tout au long de ses plus de trois cents pages les différentes étapes d’un inaltérable engagement français auprès de ceux qui réaliseront le génocide. En 1993, alors que de nombreux massacres se sont déjà produits comme en prélude au génocide, les «exactions des extrémistes hutus» sont qualifiées au plus haut niveau à Paris d’un adjectif : elles sont «malheureuses».

Durant le génocide, Paris persévère : livraisons d’armes, recommandations diplomatiques, soutien politique. L’engagement reste entier. L’opération Turquoise est lancée en juin 1994, après trois mois de tueries ininterrompues. Elle permet, assure péremptoirement la commission rwandaise, la «prise en charge du projet génocidaire par les décideurs français».

Le rapport bascule alors dans l’insoutenable. Des troupes ayant participé à Turquoise sont accusées d’avoir commis de nombreuses exactions : viols, largages par hélicoptères, pillages, représailles, menaces… Des dizaines de témoignages – de rescapés comme de repentis – se succèdent. Les mises en cause sont circonstanciées et précises, elles se recoupent parfois, ne peuvent être ignorées.

Dans l’ensemble, la charge est violente et nourrie. Plusieurs points peuvent porter à discussion, mais la lecture du rapport laisse un sentiment amer où l’effarement se mêle au dégoût.

Réplique au réquisitoire du juge Bruguière, le travail de la commission rwandaise place Paris au pied du mur. Le simple démenti – tant les éléments sont nombreux à défaut d’être avérés – ne peut suffire. Quant à ne pas répondre, comme cela fut le cas pour Kigali mis en cause par le rapport Bruguière, ce serait courir le risque d’avaliser.

Quatorze ans après le génocide, l’épreuve de force politique est portée à son paroxysme. Ce génocide, que François Mitterrand avait un jour qualifié de «sans importance», n’a pas fini de tarauder les consciences.

There is remarkable television footage shot in the first days of the genocide in Rwanda. It shows a large room in the French Embassy in Kigali filled floor to ceiling with shredded documents. This was probably the paper trail that might have revealed the depth of involvement between the Elysée Palace and the Hutu faction responsible for massacring hundreds of thousands of Tutsi and opposition Hutu.

This week Rwanda’s commission of inquiry published its findings into the role of France in the genocide of 1994. The report – the fruit of two years’ work that includes the testimony of 638 witnesses, including survivors and perpetrators of genocide – is damning. It says that certain French politicians, diplomats and military leaders – including President François Mitterrand – were complicit in genocide. The French authorities knowingly aided and abetted what happened by training Hutu militia and devising strategy for Rwanda’s armed forces. Training and funding was also given to Rwandan intelligence services on how to establish a database later used to draw up a “kill list” of Tutsi.

The most shocking allegations come from survivors who allege that French soldiers participated in the massacres of Tutsi. These soldiers were a part of Operation Turquoise, a French military intervention in June 1994, an ostensibly humanitarian mission that had the backing of the UN Security Council.

The Rwanda report directly contradicts an earlier investigation by the French Senate, which reported in 1998 that France had in no way “incited or encouraged” the genocide. But it also builds on the Senate’s earlier work, which had revealed how some French actions had been “regrettable”, and “the threat of a possible genocide had been underestimated”.

What happened in Rwanda in 1994 is a milestone event; in a few terrible months, up to one million people were killed in organised massacres, planned in advance by the Hutu regime. Its aim was to create a “pure Hutu state” by eliminating the minority Tutsi and all opponents of its extremist Hutu Power ideology. This was done by mobilising the country’s unemployed youth into a militia called the Interahamwe; 30,000 young men were recruited and trained to kill with agricultural tools. They were indoctrinated with a racist anti-Tutsi ideology. There were no secret death camps. The killing was in broad daylight.

The French had favoured the Hutu cause since the 1960s. The rule by the majority Hutu in this one-party state was considered democratic. The overt discrimination against the minority Tutsi and the human rights abuses against them were largely ignored. By 1990 some one million Rwandans were living as refugees in neighbouring states, Tutsi who had fled during murderous anti-Tutsi campaigns. In October 1990, the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded from neighbouring Uganda to force a return home for them. The French immediately sent elite troops to defend the regime in Kigali and in the three years of civil war that followed the French military and French-supplied weaponry ensured its survival.

These French forces stayed for three years, until late 1993 when UN peacekeepers were sent to monitor an internationally brokered peace agreement providing for the return of the refugees and a transition from a Hutu dictatorship to a power-sharing democracy that would include the Tutsi minority.

Drawing on documents recently released from the Paris archive of Mitterrand, the commission clearly describes the motive for French policy in Rwanda. These documents show how the RPF invasion was considered as clear aggression by an Anglophone neighbour on a Francophone country. The RPF was a part of an “Anglophone plot”, involving the President of Uganda, to create an English-speaking “Tutsi-land”. Once Rwanda was “lost” to Anglophone influence, French credibility in Africa would never recover. The policy was to avoid a military victory by the RPF.

The French journalist Patrick de Saint Exupéry alleges that the French created a secret command of the Rwandan Army through what he called a “légion présidentielle”. This was a group of elite operatives that was answerable only to Mitterrand and which drew up battle plans and military strategy, and built a psychological warfare capability with operatives trained in the manipulation of public opinion.

My own work has shown that not all French military operatives left Rwanda when the UN peacekeepers arrived in 1993. When the genocide began six months later there were senior French officers attached to key units in the Rwandan Army – the para-commando and reconnaissance battalions, and the Presidential Guard. It was French-trained soldiers from these units who, early in the morning of April 7, had orders to eliminate members of Rwanda’s political opposition – and to kill anyone with a Tutsi identity card. Without a full accounting from these French officers the story of the crucial early hours of genocide will never be complete. To date only three French officers have testified at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda – and only then in defence of Rwandan military officers on genocide charges.

The French Senate discovered how policy towards Rwanda had been made by a secretive network of military officers, politicians, diplomats, businessmen, and senior intelligence operatives. At its centre was Mitterrand. French policy had been unaccountable to either parliament or the press. This has made the discovery of the truth about France’s role in the genocide difficult. It may be that a true reckoning of France’s responsibility will never be possible.

It happened just 14 years ago — the slaughter of roughly a million people here in only 100 days. “More people had been killed more quickly than in any other mass killing in recorded history,” writes Martin Meredith in his book “The Fate of Africa.”

And yet today there are few visible traces of the genocide that began in April 1994. It’s not that Rwandans have forgotten, but that they seem to have willed themselves to live in the present. That makes this place feel different from other post-conflict states I know, such as Iraq and Lebanon, where the past and present are congealed in a wound that never heals.

During a week spent traveling the country, I found that Rwandans rarely brought up the events of the past. They almost never named the ethnic groups involved in the 1994 genocide — the Hutu perpetrators and the Tutsi victims. Expatriates would speak a kind of code, referring to “H’s” and “T’s.”

At the Hotel des Mille Collines, made famous by the movie “Hotel Rwanda,” you try to imagine the desperate refugees crammed together in a space that now features a fitness club and a poolside bar with live music. But here, again, the present has obliterated the past. Trying to fall asleep, you think how big the bedroom is, how many more people it could hold.

A glimpse into the horror came from a family friend, Antoine Rwego. The Rwegos were Tutsis, the tribe that was favored by the Belgian colonizers but then repressed by the Hutu majority after independence in 1962. His father was a veterinarian; his mother worked in a bank. They were part of a privileged minority, so they were targets.

Rwego remembers when the massacres began on April 7, 1994. Soldiers came looking for his father, but he was away. Rwego, then 16, escaped over the wall to the house of a Hutu neighbor who had married a Tutsi. His 12-year-old sister and 10-year-old brother were not so lucky. They were murdered by armed men who invaded the family compound. Rwego heard the screams next door, but he could do nothing.

After several days, young Rwego fled the neighborhood and miraculously found his father. They hid in another part of town until May, when someone from his old district chanced to see them. On May 16, his father was tricked out of hiding on the pretext that he was needed for a medical emergency. He never came back.

For Rwego, it was not a question of forgetting but of continuing: “Why had I remained alive? So that I should do something for others.” He got top grades in school, earned a medical degree and now is a doctor with Rwanda’s national AIDS research organization. He is a reserved, stoical man, like most Rwandans I met, but as he told this story, he brushed a tear from one eye.

If you visit the Kigali Memorial Center here, you will look into the very heart of this tragedy. The story is meticulously told: from the Belgian colonialists’ decision in the 1930s to assign Hutu and Tutsi racial identities to people who had lived together for centuries; to the rise of “Hutu Power” as a racist ideology to sustain a corrupt Rwandan elite; to the planning for genocidal killings during the early 1990s, which the West knew about but did nothing to stop; to the final result, the slaughter of men, women and children, as recorded in the tableaux of the Children’s Memorial:

“Francine Murengezi Ingabire. Age: 12. Favorite sport: Swimming. Favorite food: Eggs and chips. Favorite drink: Milk and Fanta Tropical. Best friend: Her elder sister Claudette. Cause of death: Hacked by machete.”

And yet life went on. The government of Paul Kagame, a Tutsi who led the armed revolt that ended the genocide on July 4, 1994, rules the country now with a firm hand — maintaining order here even at the occasional cost of human rights. The “genocidaires,” as they’re called, are brought to justice in a process that has included some abuses but has avoided the worst sort of revenge. Rwanda is again a bright, tidy spot in the center of Africa, and people talk of an economic boom.

As my friend Dr. Rwego says, it is a question of breaking free from your history, even when you hear in your mind the cries of your brother and sister: “To stay in the things of the past, it prevents you from changing.”

Ruanda es un pequeño país anclado en la región de los Grandes Lagos y fronterizo con Uganda, Tanzania, la República Democrática del Congo (ex Zaire) y Burundi. Un 80% de sus ocho millones de habitantes son hutus; casi todo el resto, tutsis.

Desde el fin de los años 1980, Francia apoyaba abiertamente al presidente hutu Habyarimana, a pesar de lo que se sabía en todos los observatorios internacionales: que las Fuerzas Armadas Ruandesas (FAR), junto con las milicias hutus, estaban involucradas en una feroz represión de todos los opositores tutsis; entre ellos, la fuerte minoría tutsi exiliada en Uganda y organizada en el Frente Patriótico Ruandés (FPR).

Cuando en abril de 1994 el avión del presidente Habyarimana fue abatido en un sospechoso accidente, lo que hasta la fecha era una lucha sangrienta por el poder se convirtió en la matanza de la minoría tutsi del país.

¿Fueron Francia y su entonces presidente François Mitterrand responsables en parte de lo que se consideran los peores crímenes de guerra desde el Holocausto judío de la Segunda Guerra Mundial? ¿Participaron los servicios secretos franceses en el atentado contra Habyarimana?

A pesar del desmentido por parte de los sucesivos gobiernos franceses, no son pocos los analistas independientes, franceses o internacionales, que defienden las acusaciones contra París. Para el general canadiense Romeo Dallaire, comandante del Cuerpo de la ONU (MINUAR) en 1993-1994 -que pagó su estancia en Ruanda con 10 años de depresión clínica-, los oficiales franceses consejeros del Ejército ruandés “sabían necesariamente lo que pasaba. Estaban muy bien informados sobre los preparativos para la matanza”. Para Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, uno de los pocos que han hecho un trabajo de periodista de una ética totalmente irreprochable -completado luego por los análisis y libros de François Xavier Vershave, Jean-Paul Gouteux, Medhi Ba, Michel Sitbon, David Servenay y Gabriel Périès, y el serio trabajo de la revista La Nuit Rwandaise-, “los oficiales franceses formaron a los asesinos para el genocidio. Enseñaron estrategias y tácticas al Ejército ruandés”.

El general Dallaire va más lejos: “Unos días después del asesinato del presidente Habyarimana, vimos en acción a soldados europeos vistiendo uniformes del Ejército ruandés. Había muchos militares franceses en el Estado Mayor del Ejército ruandés y, en particular, en la Guardia Presidencial. ¡Y se quedaron hasta el final!”. En la película Kigali, todos los interlocutores del periodista J. C. Klotz afirman que, deliberadamente, los militares franceses hicieron oídos sordos a las llamadas desesperadas de los tutsis.

Para Linda Melvern, autora de un estudio sobre el exterminio, “el genocidio fue perfectamente planificado. Es difícil creer que la preparación técnica de las matanzas, para las cuales fue necesaria la compra de miles de machetes, no llamara la atención de los 47 oficiales franceses de rango superior incrustados en ese momento dentro del Ejército ruandés y bajo las órdenes directas del Gobierno francés”.

Según la Rwanda News Agency (enero de 2008), dos documentos secretos han salido de los archivos del Ministerio de Defensa francés. En el primero, el coronel Poncet, encargado de la evacuación de los franceses residentes en Ruanda, recomienda “no enseñar a los medios de comunicación a soldados franceses absteniéndose de poner fin a las matanzas de las que son testigos”. En el segundo, el coronel Cussac confirma que “en el Ejército francés se sabía desde el 8 de abril de 1994 que las matanzas tenían a los tutsis como blanco”. Georges Kapler, enviado por la Comisión Ciudadana de Investigación (CEC) para interrogar a los sobrevivientes, descubre, a medida que los testigos oculares van hablando, la implicación directa de soldados franceses en los acontecimientos, y concluye que le es “imposible no considerar la hipótesis según la cual este país de los derechos humanos (Francia) no sólo habría facilitado, sino concebido, el plan de exterminio”. La CEC aportó también informaciones espeluznantes sobre lo que pasó en la “Zona Humanitaria segura” bajo control francés.

¿Queda alguna duda sobre la naturaleza real de la “guerra” de Ruanda? Es extremadamente penoso aceptar la idea de que, lo que se llama hoy un “genocidio reconocido de notoriedad pública”, según el Tribunal Penal Internacional para Ruanda (TPIR) -y no una guerra por el poder entre fracciones tribales-, haya implicado como testigo y/o como actor a una sólida democracia europea, en este caso, Francia.

“Nadie puede cuestionar que en 1994 hubo una masiva campaña enfocada a destruir el conjunto o por lo menos gran parte del pueblo tutsi de Ruanda”, dice el TPIR. “No se puede conocer el número de víctimas, pero los tutsis en su inmensa mayoría han sido matados, violados o dañados en su integridad física o mental. El genocidio ruandés es un hecho que se inscribe en la historia del mundo”.

Escribe Tony Judt en The New York Review of Books: “El problema no es la descripción (de los horrores del siglo XX), sino el mensaje según el cual todo eso queda ya detrás de nosotros y que ahora sólo nos queda avanzar, sin más trabas y aliviados de los errores del pasado, hacia una época mejor y diferente”. Pues, adelante.

En febrero, el juez de la Audiencia Nacional Fernando Andreu dictó 40 órdenes de arresto internacional por delito de genocidio en Ruanda y la República Democrática del Congo contra otros tantos militares que ocupan altos cargos en el actual Gobierno. Entre los muertos, nueve españoles: seis misiones y tres miembros de Médicos del Mundo.

En Ruanda, el misionero Joaquim Vallmajó, poco antes de ser torturado y asesinado junto a otros cinco compañeros, fue abofeteado por el coronel Rwahama mientras le espetaba “No volverás a informar a nadie, Vallmajó”. Sin embargo, su voz silenciada resuena hoy más ampliada. Las denuncias de Quim eran certeras y perturbadoras. En diversas cartas a sus amigos de Figueres les rogaba que denunciasen que los “invasores” del FPR (Frente Patriótico Ruandés) buscaban el poder a cualquier precio. O que habían “puesto en marcha una campaña de desinformación para hacer creer que las víctimas son los verdugos y los verdugos son las víctimas”. Tres días antes de su secuestro -desapareció en abril de 1994- inevitablemente tuvo que oír en su casa parroquial los alaridos, explosiones y ametralladoras de la matanza a medianoche de unos 2.500 campesinos hutu en el estadio de Byumba.

Quim fue la primera víctima española, pero tanto los seis misioneros como los tres miembros de Médicos del Mundo fueron testigos incómodos de crímenes masivos contra civiles hutu, realizados por la cúpula del FPR, que actualmente gobierna Ruanda. Eran testigos que cuestionaban la versión oficial, que se ha logrado imponer internacionalmente, sobre lo sucedido allí en la última década del siglo XX. Una versión parcial, ya que todo lo reduce a las grandes masacres de abril-junio de 1994, realizadas por los extremistas hutu y calificadas de genocidio. Y una versión distorsionada, porque presenta como nobles liberadores a aquellos contra los que ahora la justicia española -conforme al principio de justicia universal- ha dictado orden internacional de captura, acusándolos a su vez de genocidio por crímenes aún mayores cometidos desde 1990 hasta la actualidad, tanto en Ruanda como en la República Democrática del Congo.

En el vértice, controlando hasta los más pequeños detalles y temido por todos, está el entonces rebelde y ahora presidente Paul Kagame. Los múltiples testimonios son concordantes: sus repetidas órdenes son siempre de screening, código interno que significa “eliminación sin distinción” de miles de civiles desarmados. Aunque en el caso de los tres obispos y diversos sacerdotes y religiosas asesinados en Kabgayi junto a una multitud de civiles, usó una variante: “Limpiad esa basura”.

No sólo sorprende la magnitud de estos crímenes, también el grado de perversidad en los métodos usados para alcanzar el poder.El FPR pretendía un poder absoluto, no compartido ni siquiera con sus partidos coaligados: el MDR, el PL y el PSD. Un poder total que el FPR, dada su realidad minoritaria, jamás alcanzaría por el voto sino sólo si dinamitaba los Acuerdos de Paz de Arusha y llevaba al país a una dinámica de caos y guerra, de la que se sabían vencedores. Tenía objetivos muy claros: el asesinato de líderes hutu y tutsi, incluso los de los partidos aliados, y su adjudicación al Gobierno de Habyarimana; el asesinato de este mismo, ya que entonces era el único capaz de representar un mínimo orden y consenso en el país; no impedir las matanzas de tutsis del interior tras el magnicidio, orientando intencionadamente sus tropas hacia otros objetivos, para abandonar a estos “traidores” de su propia etnia a los machetes de los extremistas hutu. Todos estos objetivos fueron alcanzados y están abundantemente probados. Además de la reconquista de la idílica Ruanda, cuyo Gobierno, según su ancestral imaginario feudal, les correspondía desde siempre, el FPR pretendía otro gran objetivo: los importantes recursos naturales del vecino Zaire. Los crímenes de pillaje sistemático de coltan, diamantes y oro son descarados y masivos.

El triste papel de la ONU, manipulada por EE UU y decenas de multinacionales mineras, ha sido especialmente lamentable en todo lo referente al ACNUR. Este organismo, en contra de su propio mandato y del Informe Gersony (que denunció crímenes contra al menos 30.000 personas) forzó el retorno de los refugiados hutu desde el Zaire a Ruanda, a sabiendas que conllevaría en muchos casos la desaparición, la prisión o la muerte violenta de los refugiados que tenía encomendado proteger.

A pesar de que el secretario de Estado adjunto para Asuntos Africanos y el director general de la Agencia de Cooperación estadounidenses ofrecieron al FPR embargar tal Informe si detenían las matanzas, éste sigue aún ocultado en la ONU. Las matanzas no cesaron en Ruanda ni en la República Democrática del Congo.

La fiscal del Tribunal Internacional para Ruanda TPIR, Carla del Ponte, fue inmediatamente destituida cuando pretendió imputar a uno sólo de estos 40 presuntos terroristas de estado en activo. Ahora el juez Fernando Andreu, con su integridad y profesionalidad, en un auto sólidamente fundamentado, ha marcado un hito, ha procesado por crímenes internacionales por primera vez en la historia a los vencedores.

We are used to seeing aged Holocaust survivors with faded photographs, telling their stories to remind the young and forgetful. So it is shocking to meet a 31-year-old genocide survivor with memories so fresh they bleed.

I talked to Freddy Mutanguha in a field of white crosses, near a half-finished monument to perhaps 800,000 victims of the Rwandan genocide. “My mom,” he recalled, “gave money to be killed by a bullet, because she saw the machetes and knew what they would do to her. But the bullet was too expensive.”

The mass violence of Hutu against Tutsi left a nation of corpses — and a nation of stories. A young man took me on a tour of the neighborhood where he had been hunted for weeks by soldiers and informers. At one point, a friend purchased his life with the bribe of a case of beer. He hugs a woman along the dirt street, commenting as she walks away, “She lost all of her children.”

A man I met in passing, I later learned, was 14 when he performed the lonely task of burying his mother, father and siblings in a grave near their home.

And the ghosts seem to gather in sacred places. At Ntarama Church, soldiers surrounded thousands of Tutsis seeking refuge, blocked the door and threw grenades inside. The walls and rafters of the dark sanctuary are covered with the clothing in which the victims were found. Light comes through the tin roof in holes from shrapnel, like constellations frozen at the hour of death.

Some things about the lead-up to the Rwandan genocide are familiar. Victims were dehumanized for years as “inyenzi” — cockroaches — just as the Jews of Europe were labeled vermin. Tutsi children were forced to stand up in primary-school classes to be humiliated and abused — just as Jewish children were once treated. And children were eventually a special target of the murderers, to prevent them from growing up to perpetuate the threat — one of the excuses the Nazis employed.

And these patterns should be familiar, because at least some of the hatred in this part of Africa has European roots. In traditional African culture, the division between Hutu and Tutsi was social and economic; intermarriage was common, and mobility between classes was possible. Then German and Belgian colonial rulers in Rwanda and other places declared this a racial divide — measuring the skulls of Hutus and Tutsis to prove their racial theories and issuing racial ID cards.

But there are differences between the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. Over time, Germany developed an impersonal machinery of death, with trains and timetables and gas chambers. In Rwanda, the violence was more intimate. Neighbors who had shared meals suddenly became informers and executioners — adopted children turned upon their families. At one church I visited, soldiers had taken children by the legs and smashed their heads against the wall.

And this has left behind a unique challenge. In Europe, there was little need for post-genocide reconciliation because few Jews were left. Here in Rwanda, many complicit in genocide remain in their neighborhoods or return after prison sentences. For many others, the fate of parents and siblings, after 13 years, is still unknown. Potential witnesses protect the guilty, and justice is uneven. Mass graves continue to be discovered when building foundations are dug. It is difficult for Rwandans to draw grand lessons from all this — except the need to somehow deliver the next generation from shapeless rage.

The rest of us can draw lessons of courage. A man I met who ran an orphanage saved the lives of nearly 400 children by bluffing the militias and bribing them with food. And those 400 lives mattered, even when 10,000 in the neighborhood around them were lost — both for the lives themselves and for the affirmation of human dignity that such rescues always symbolize.

We should also draw lessons of shame. Signs of stress and pleas for help were largely ignored in 1994. The world has a poor track record of preventing mass murder, though we have gotten good at the apologies that follow.

As the Rwandan genocide began, a woman named Sifa began hiding the hunted in her home until it was full. When one more arrived, she was forced to turn her crying friend away. But then she reconsidered, saying, “Come back or your tears will judge me forever.”

In Rwanda and elsewhere, the tears judge us still.

The hastily arranged car boot sale outside the French Embassy in downtown Kigali last Monday did good business. On offer were laptop computers, televisions, three-piece suites and, well, even the cars themselves. Given the decision taken by the Rwandan Government ten days ago to expel the French Ambassador, his staff and to close all official French buildings in the tiny Central African country, there was clearly little expectation of a return.

Behind these scenes of gloomy embassy employees packing and selling their diplomatic and domestic baggage is a recent history between France and Rwanda steeped in a mire of blood and guilt. Indeed it is the second time in 12 years that the French have found the need for a sudden retreat from Rwanda.

In April 1994 the French Embassy became the setting for the formation of the extremist Hutu Government that was to organise and carry out the meticulously planned genocide of the Tutsis. Witnesses spoke of these ministers, many now facing life imprisonment for crimes against humanity, sitting in plush embassy chairs comparing notes on where the killing was going best. Their host, the French Ambassador, later helped to evacuate those extremists to Paris, away from the apocalypse they had created. The ambassador then made a bonfire of two rooms piled high with documents linking his Government with that of the Hutu dictatorship of Juvénal Habyarimana.

Rwanda is made up mainly of two ethnic groups, the vast majority being Hutu, who, under Habyarimana’s “apartheid” State, took total control of the army, bureaucracy and government. The Tutsi, 15 per cent of the population, were banished from public life.

When François Mitterrand, then the French President, decided in 1990 to send in crack paratroopers to protect Habyarimana, his French-speaking friend and ally, it looked like just another attempt by Paris to keep a client leader in power. The danger came from across the border in Uganda. Anglophone Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front, made up mostly of Tutsis previously driven from their homeland by a series of earlier massacres, had invaded.

During the next three years Mitterrand had no compunction in sending in troops to save a brutal and corrupt regime. The Hutu army received millions of dollars of French weaponry; and the French elite training corps trained its Rwandan allies in how to dismember bodies, fire its new heavy artillery and use attack Gazelle helicopters.

Habyarimana was assassinated on April 6, 1994, when unknown assailants shot down his Falcon 50 jet, another present from the French taxpayer. The event ushered in possibly the hundred bloodiest days in history. Up to one million Tutsis were slaughtered.

As the body count grew, France welcomed ministers of the genocidal Government to an official reception in Paris. Meanwhile, its military continued to send arms to bolster its Hutu allies in power, regardless of the genocide they were perpetrating.

Since 1994 France has been adept at trying to hide this stain on la gloire. Its ministers, including the current Prime Minister, constantly repeat the “double genocide” myth, which alleged that while Hutu killed Tutsi, the Tutsi also killed Hutu. It is akin to claiming that Holocaust victims were also mass murderers.

So the latest French government attempt to cover its Rwandan shame is no surprise to observers of La Françafrique. The timing behind the sudden release of Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière’s report, which blames Kagame for Habyarimana’s death, is no coincidence. Four senior French military and political figures will shortly give testimony before the international war crimes tribunal in Arusha. They have been called by the defence team of Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, who faces charges of being the mastermind behind the genocide.

It is deeply embarrassing, like being called to defend Nazis at Nuremberg. Shortly, too, Kagame’s government of reconciliation, which drove the genocidaire out in 1994, will announce the findings of its own inquiry into the French involvement in the genocide. It promises to uncover even more explicit details of Mitterrand’s crime.

President Kagame arrived in London on Sunday for a five-day visit to the UK. His 12-year-old Government has revived a country torn apart by genocide, corruption and poverty. He has emphasised there is no “Hutu” or “Tutsi” in his country now, only Rwandans. But while he has created a stable economy and new sense of pride, it is vital that the world, which looked the other way in 1994, now demands answers from France about its direct complicity in the genocide.

There seems to be an unwritten rule among Western leaders not to question each other’s foreign policies too closely. But genocide cannot be allowed to be so cynically forgotten. Tony Blair has a duty to ask some deeply troubling questions about how and why the Élysée supported a genocidal government before, during and after one of the most appalling episodes of killing the world has ever seen. He may put at risk having some of his own skeletons unearthed. But the dead and the traumatised survivors in Rwanda deserve such belated recognition — and respect.

The Guardian published an article that centred on a five-month-old report on the Murambi genocide site in Rwanda (Two years late and mired in controversy: the British memorial to Rwanda’s past, November 13).

Two years late for what? It may have been desirable to open the memorial centre two years ago, but no opening date had been set. The Aegis Trust, a British charity, was asked by the Rwandan government to help convey the genocide story at Murambi, where 50,000 Tutsis were slaughtered in 1994. We do not drag our feet on such projects. We completed a much larger exhibition in Rwanda’s main genocide museum, the Kigali Memorial Centre, in just four months in 2004; but remote Murambi poses a different set of challenges.

Myriad questions surround this place, and our task is to bring dignity to the victims and facilitate consensus among divergent opinions in Rwanda. For example, what do you do with 800 corpses that lie in the former school when they are the only way desperate survivors can convey the tragedy?

Aegis encouraged Rwanda’s culture ministry to set up a commission as part of a normal consultation process. Some sweeping comments in its report do not amount to a “mire of controversy”. Representing genocide is complicated, and debate around the memorial at Murambi is expected and necessary.

The Guardian article carried no comment from the ministry and none from genocide survivors involved in the work of Aegis in Rwanda. Stating that the plans of Aegis are being criticised by “prominent Rwandans” misleads readers about the respect in which Aegis is held in Rwanda. And these “leading Rwandans” were not identified.

The sub-headline “UK charity’s plans for massacre site criticised” could be contextualised if the author referred to the Kigali memorial. On a site where a quarter of a million victims of the genocide are buried, this memorial will be visited by more than 150,000 people this year and receives praise daily from visitors, including world leaders. The Rwandan prime minister, Bernard Makuza, wrote in the visitors’ book: “You are the stone on which we will build a Rwanda without conflict.”

Last month Kigali’s mayor extended Aegis’s contract to manage the centre for the next five years. Activities at genocide memorials are not empty historic exercises: they contribute to reparation by acknowledging the immense loss of survivors; they empower young people to build a unified, safer nation through education programmes; and they are a warning to international visitors about the consequence of failing to protect people under threat of genocide, in places such as Darfur.

Now the culture ministry, with Aegis, is examining options for conserving or representing the piles of human victims in Murambi. These were shown graphically in the photograph accompanying the Guardian article. By stopping them turning to dust and by keeping their memory alive, we aim to prevent this scene from recurring in Rwanda, or elsewhere in the world.

epuis plus de dix ans, les commémorations du mois d’avril donnent l’occasion aux autorités rwandaises de rappeler les responsabilités internationales dans le déclenchement et l’accomplissement du génocide des Rwandais tutsis. Cette année, la relance des accusations a été particulièrement agressive. Parmi les autorités et puissances étrangères, le président Paul Kagame a nommément dénoncé à plusieurs reprises, les Nations unies, la France et la Belgique (par exemple le 26 avril, lors de diverses interviews accordées au cours de sa visite au Canada). En outre, à la déjà longue liste des griefs formulés à l’encontre du Tribunal pénal international pour le Rwanda s’ajoute le reproche de ne pas avoir poursuivi jusqu’à ce jour les personnalités étrangères qui ont déserté le pays lors du génocide, ou coupables de complicité dans sa préparation ou son déroulement.

Ces accusations, reprises par la diplomatie rwandaise, répondent à la réévaluation en cours du rôle du Front patriotique rwandais, «libérateur» du Rwanda et «sauveur» des Tutsis, sorti vainqueur de la guerre en 1994. Réévaluation qui s’appuie sur les témoignages de nombreux opposants civils et militaires. Outre les accusations de plus en plus précises sur la responsabilité de Kagame dans l’attentat contre l’avion des présidents rwandais et burundais, de nombreux éléments (attentats contre les civils, assassinats de personnalités politiques) laissent désormais penser que l’objectif de la guerre dont le FPR avait pris l’initiative en octobre 1990 n’était pas d’obtenir le droit au retour des réfugiés et une juste représentation politique jusque-là refusés, mais de s’emparer du pouvoir. Enfin, autre élément contextuel, l’actuel régime de terreur instauré au Rwanda, la stratégie régionale belliqueuse, l’exploitation des ressources minérales et naturelles de l’est du Congo par l’armée et les milieux d’affaires rwandais suscitent une prise de distance à l’égard d’un pouvoir qui bénéficiait jusqu’ici de soutiens internationaux puissants et apparemment indéfectibles.

C’est bien à ce niveau que réside le problème. Depuis douze ans, le FPR et son chef, le général-président Paul Kagame, n’ont pu parachever leur emprise exclusive sur le pays, installer des institutions sous leur contrôle total, organiser des élections-plébiscites, déstabiliser l’ensemble de la sous-région, mettre en oeuvre une justice de vainqueurs que grâce à ce soutien international et aux largesses financières exceptionnelles qui l’accompagnent.

Le raisonnement peut être poussé plus loin encore. Depuis une demi-douzaine d’années, le Tribunal pénal international, puis diverses juridictions nationales (française et plus récemment espagnole) ont engagé des procédures judiciaires qui visent des responsables du FPR soupçonnés d’être les auteurs de crimes de guerre, de crimes contre l’humanité et d’assassinats divers, en premier lieu celui des passagers de l’avion présidentiel le 6 avril 1994. Pour l’essentiel, et depuis au moins deux ans, les juges et procureurs en charge ont bouclé leurs dossiers ou disposent de suffisamment d’éléments concordants leur permettant d’engager des poursuites. Ce qu’ils ne font pas.

En l’absence de toute explication publique, nombre d’observateurs invoquent le très efficace travail des officiels rwandais pour intimider leurs interlocuteurs, mobiliser les soutiens diplomatiques, allumer des contre-feux en prenant en otage ou éliminant les témoins potentiels, lancer des procédures contre des «complices du génocide» étrangers (une commission chargée de poursuivre des ressortissants français a été créée le 10 avril 2006), etc.

Après avoir d’avance contesté toute légitimité à la procédure française sous la responsabilité du juge Bruguière et engagé leurs propres poursuites envers des citoyens français, les autorités rwandaises ont fait du TPIR leur cible privilégiée. Alors que l’existence du Tribunal touche à sa fin, le refus des procureurs successifs de mettre en oeuvre l’intégralité de son mandat devient intenable devant l’accusation d’avoir pratiqué une «justice de vainqueur». A contrario, la décision de juger l’ensemble des crimes commis au Rwanda en 1994 aurait un immense retentissement symbolique et politique.

Aujourd’hui, l’impératif de stabilisation du Congo expliquerait la retenue constatée envers le dossier rwandais. Les grands bailleurs ne souhaiteraient surtout pas que le Rwanda revienne troubler le déroulement de la transition congolaise au moment crucial des élections et de la période postélection. Lui laisser libre jeu et tempérer les ardeurs judiciaires des procureurs ­ sans être dupe de ce qui s’y passe comme en témoigne par exemple le dernier rapport sur les droits de l’homme du Département d’Etat américain ­ peut se justifier tant qu’il s’agit de se donner du temps pour juger sereinement, mais le gonflement de la «bulle spéculative» judiciaire autour du dossier rwandais a vraisemblablement atteint ses limites. Le recours répété à des arguments d’opportunité affecte désormais la crédibilité même des procédures. Différer l’audience des dossiers pour se mettre «hors du temps» relève de l’illusion : il n’existe pas aux yeux des chefs militaires et politiques rwandais susceptibles d’être poursuivis de «bon» moment pour mettre fin à leur impunité. De même, les diplomates étrangers se sont depuis longtemps satisfaits de l’enterrement de facto des instructions envers les personnalités qu’ils ne souhaitent pas voir juger (en France, il ne s’est toujours tenu aucun procès en rapport avec les événements de 1994…)

Rappelons pour conclure qu’en 1995, la question se posait au procureur Goldstone alors à la tête du TPIY de savoir si les éventuelles poursuites judiciaires étaient susceptibles d’entraver ou de gêner le supposé processus de paix engagé en Bosnie-Herzégovine. Il avait été décidé que l’action judiciaire n’avait pas à tenir compte de la diplomatie et que c’était à cette dernière d’intégrer la composante judiciaire. De fait, le lancement des premiers mandats contre Mladic et Karadzic fut un élément déterminant dans l’évolution des négociations diplomatiques lorsque les politiques se sentirent «libérés». C’est la preuve que lorsque la justice remplit son rôle et rien que son rôle, elle peut atteindre ses objectifs. Encore faut-il qu’elle le remplisse.