(Kigali) The international community “let us all down” during the Tutsi genocide, Rwandan President Paul Kagame declared on Sunday, on the occasion of the 30e anniversary of the massacres whose shadow still hangs over this country in the African Great Lakes.
The official commemorations began this Sunday, April 7 – the anniversary of the first killings of what would become the last genocide of the 20th century, leaving 800,000 dead, mainly among the Tutsi minority, but also moderate Hutus.
The international community had been strongly criticized for its inaction before and during the genocide.
“It is the international community that has let us all down, whether through contempt or cowardice,” declared Paul Kagame during a speech given to several thousand people at the BK Arena, an ultra-modern multipurpose hall from the capital Kigali.
“No one, no one, not even the African Union (AU), can exonerate itself from its inaction in the face of the chronicle of a predicted genocide. Let us have the courage to recognize it, and to take responsibility for it,” also affirmed the President of the AU Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat.
Paul Kagame – who has ruled the country with an iron fist since the end of the genocide – gathered in the morning, alongside foreign dignitaries, in front of a wreath of flowers and lit a flame of remembrance at the Gisozi Memorial.
At the end of the day, thousands of people took part in a night vigil at the 10,000-seat BK Arena, with candles in their hands.
“Today is a bad day for all Rwandans,” says Ernestine Mukambarushimana, 30, gently. But this ceremony does her good, she says. “I don’t feel alone.”
PHOTO LUIS TATO, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Former US President Bill Clinton (center) was present for the commemorations.
In the audience, Ange Christian Kwizera was seven years old when Hutu militiamen killed his parents in the parish of Mibilizi (southwest). He became a history professor to help “ensure that there will never be another genocide.”
Former US President Bill Clinton, who was in office at the White House during the massacres, French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné and French Secretary of State for the Sea Hervé Berville, born in Rwanda, earlier attended the ceremony.
“Responsibilities”
On the occasion of this anniversary, French President Emmanuel Macron affirmed in a video broadcast on Sunday that “France assumes everything and exactly that in the terms that I used” on May 27, 2021. While traveling in Kigali, he had then said he had come to “recognize” the “responsibilities” of France.
Paris, which maintained close relations with the Hutu regime when the genocide began, has long been accused of “complicity” by Kigali.
“We have all abandoned hundreds of thousands of victims to this infernal closed session,” he added, specifying that Paris had “not been complicit” with the Hutu genocidaires. Mr. Macron did not apologize, while saying he hoped for forgiveness from the survivors.
“I have no words to add, no words to take away from what I told you that day,” he said on Sunday.
On Thursday, the Élysée reported that, according to Emmanuel Macron, France “could have stopped the genocide” of 1994 in Rwanda “with its Western and African allies”, but “did not have the will”. Words that the head of state did not say on Sunday.
After decades of tensions, going as far as a breakdown in diplomatic relations between Paris and Kigali between 2006 and 2009, a rapprochement was made possible between the two countries following the establishment of a commission by Emmanuel Macron which concluded in 2021 that France had “heavy and overwhelming responsibilities”.
US President Joe Biden declared that the repercussions of the massacres are “still being felt across Rwanda and across the world”. “We will never forget the horrors of those 100 days,” he added.
Carnage
In Rwanda, for seven days, music will not be allowed in public places or on the radio. Sporting events and films will be banned from broadcast on television, unless they are linked to the commemorations.
The killings of spring 1994 were triggered the day after the attack on the plane of Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana, in a frenzy of hatred fueled by virulent anti-Tutsi propaganda.
The carnage ended when the Tutsi RPF rebellion seized Kigali on July 4, triggering an exodus of hundreds of thousands of Hutus to neighboring Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo).
Thirty years later, mass graves continue to be unearthed.
Rwanda is carrying out reconciliation work, notably with the creation in 2002 of community courts, the “gacaca” where victims could hear the “confessions” of the executioners.
Justice has played a major role, but according to Kigali, hundreds of people suspected of having participated in the genocide are still at large, particularly in neighboring countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, for his part urged “States around the world to redouble their efforts to bring to justice all suspected perpetrators still alive”.
Read “Tutsi genocide: a massacre far from the cameras”