how France, despite warnings, allowed the massacre of the Tutsis to occur

On April 6, 1994, the plane carrying the Rwandan head of state, Juvénal Habyarimana, is killed by a missile. This never-solved attack marks the start of the genocide in Rwanda. For 100 days, Hutu extremists, the country’s majority ethnic group, supported by the government, massacred nearly a million Tutsis, whom they accused of having assassinated the president. An extermination planned for years, as hatred has plagued these two groups for decades.

The documentary Rwanda, towards the apocalypse, directed by Michaël Sztanke, Maria Malagardis and Seamus Haley, broadcast Sunday April 7 on France 5, traces the genesis of this genocide, reveals its historical foundations, its preparation and the role that France played in this extermination.

France keen to maintain its interests in Africa

Rwanda was colonized by Germany, then Belgium, which inherited the country’s colonial administration after the First World War. In the 1930s, the Belgian colonial authorities formalized an ethnic distinction between Tutsis and Hutus. To establish their power, they favor and protect the Tutsis, considered the country’s elite, to the detriment of the Hutus. But at the end of the 1950s, the Hutus denounced their exploitation and the Tutsis showed desire for independence. Belgium then changes alliance and rallies to the cause of the Hutus. The Rwandan revolution was violent, thousands of Tutsis were driven into exile and the Hutu majority took power, supported by Belgium. In July 1962, Rwanda’s independence was declared.

In 1973, the former army chief Juvénal Habyarimana took power in a coup and established an authoritarian regime which pursued a discriminatory policy towards the Tutsis. A civil war broke out in 1990 between supporters of his government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a political and military movement led by Paul Kagame and made up of Tutsis exiled in Uganda, who wanted to return to their country by force. The Rwandan president then requested military aid from France, led at the time by his friend François Mitterrand, who wanted to have influence in Africa and who saw Rwanda as a laboratory for his new African policy.

“Mitterrand received me face to face and told me: ‘I want to fight against the preeminence of the Americans in Africa (…) The strength of France in the UN against the Americans, we we have thanks to Africa.'”

General Jean Varret, head of the military cooperation mission in Rwanda from 1990 to 1993.

in the documentary “Rwanda, towards the apocalypse”

France sends instructors to train local gendarmes, as well as military equipment, on condition that the country takes the path to democracy. The government of President Habyarimana persuades the French government, as well as the Rwandan people, that foreign enemies wish to sow chaos in the country and take power. These opponents from outside are, however, Tutsi Rwandans whom the regime did not want to let return to the country. “The FPR has become the existential enemy of the Habyarimana regime, but also the enemy of France“, says historian Vincent Duclert, who testifies in the documentary.