Pave: Pas trop important ... IV

In these countries, genocide's no big deal.

François Mitterrand,
Fourth President of the French Fifth Republic,
explaining the underlying subtlety
of French/Françafrique policy in Rwanda

MITTERRAND'S ROLE REVEALED
IN RWANDAN GENOCIDE WARNING

PARIS July 3, 2007 (Independent) - The former French president François Mitterrand supported the perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide despite clear warnings that mass killings of the Tutsi population were being orchestrated, according to declassified French documents.

The publication of the documents in today's Le Monde for the first time confirms long-held suspicions against France. The previously secret diplomatic telegrams and government memos also suggest the late French president was obsessed with the danger of "Anglo-Saxon" influence gripping Rwanda.

The documents were secured by lawyers representing six Tutsi survivors charging France for "complicity with genocide'' before the Paris Army Tribunal.

One of the lawyers, Antoine Compte, said France was aware of the potential danger of its support for the pre-genocide Rwandan government. Mr Compte:

Massacres on an ethnic basis were going on and we have evidence that France knew this from at least January 1993. The French military executed the orders of French politicians. The motivation was an obsession with the idea of an Anglo-Saxon plot to oust France from the region.

French African policy is not part of the foreign ministry's portfolio, but is formulated and administered directly from the office of the president.

In the sixties following the independence of France's African colonies, la cellule africaine de l'Élysée, an unofficial presidential council, was established. The council was charged with oversight of French interests in Africa. This included designing and administering the mix of policy, aid, and development to secure French influence on the continent.

It was this council, headed by President Mitterand, that arranged the funding, provided the training, matériel, and logistical support for the Habyarimana government's genocide.

Mr Compte said the file of diplomatic messages and initialled presidential memos, obtained from the François Mitterrand Foundation, provided evidence that the French military in Rwanda were under direct instruction from the Elysée Palace. Mr Compte:

It emerges quite clearly from the documents that diplomats, the French secret services, military figures and [former defence minister Pierre] Joxe wanted France to disengage from Rwanda, or at least to act differently. But the president was obsessed.

To begin at the beginning, see our background post here. Ongoing posts can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

For more on the Mitterand government's complicity, see this post at ¡No Pasarán!

For an account of the failure of consenus internationalism in Rwanda read Samantha Power's excellent Bystanders To Genocide.

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