Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)
29 January 2008
Kigali — RNA can exclusively reveal that it has gotten hold of secret French Ministry of Defence memorandum that the French Parliamentary Mission of Information for Rwanda, in charge of examining French policy on Rwanda from 1990 to 1994, did not deem worth making public.
RNA correspondent in France Mr. Serge Farnel, who acquired the two documents, says they show that the French military and political establishment ensured the media was kept in the dark, and knew that the massacres targeting Tutsis were bound to take place anyway.
One document states the concern of the Army of not showing the media French soldiers avoiding any intervention to stop the mass slaughter to which they are close witnesses. The other document shows evidence that the French Army knew, as early as April 8 1994, that these massacres in Kigali were targeting the Tutsis.
The document that Mr Farnel brought up to us is memorandum n° 018/3°RPIMa/EM/CD (filed secret), that Henri Poncet, a French Colonel, sent on April 27, 1994 to the army CNC.
In this document, Col. Poncet gives a written account of the "Amaryllis Operation", that he commanded in Rwanda from April 9 to April 14 1994. The operation was intended to evacuate French nationals then present in Kigali, after the murder, three days earlier, of the president of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana.
In this memorandum, the French officer informs Admiral Jacque Lanxade that "the media were on the spot as soon as the second day of the operation" and adds that "the COMOPS (Operations Communications Staff) had rendered their job easier by organizing two press conferences a day and by helping them in moving about."
Admiral Lanxade was among about three senior military aides to President François Mitterrand. Others were General Quesnot and General Huchon. Testimony to the Rwandan Commission probing the role of French in the Genocide indicates that these officers were behind all decisions that President Mitterrand made as regards Rwanda.
Col. Poncet adds "the permanent concern of not showing them (the media) the French soldiers limiting the access to 'regrouping centres' but to foreigners of Rwanda", whilst specifying that these are provisions in Guideline n°008/DEF/EMA of April 10th.
The RNA correspondent says that in the memorandum, Colonel Poncet mentions the other "permanent concern not to show them (the media) the French soldiers not intervening to put an end to the massacres to which they were the close witnesses."
"At that stage already", as our correspondent Mr. Farnel says, "it is a confession of not having assisted people in danger."
But another account written on April 19 1994, by Col. Cussac and Lt. Col. Maurin, concerning "the action of the MTAs (Military Technical Assistants) during operation Amaryllis lets us know that the French Army knew, at least as early as April 8 1994, that the Kigali massacres targeted the Tutsis".
Both French officers indeed described the night of April 7 to April 8 as: "a very restless night, punctuated by lots of shooting at the NCD (National Council for Development - Rwandan Parliament) but also throughout the whole town - executions of Tutsi (sic), and of personalities of the opposition".
"Thus," emphasizes Farnel, "the French Army did know, at least as early as April 8 1994 that the massacres taking place in Kigali had all the characteristics of Genocide".
"From this perspective", he told RNA from Paris, "the acknowledgement by Col. Poncet of a permanent concern of not showing the media French soldiers not intervening to stop the massacres to which they were close witnesses, which they knew, as is pointed out by officers Cussac and Maurin, that carrying out of the extermination of an ethnic group, could constitute, before a National or International Court of Justice, new proof of complicity of the French Army in the Tutsi Genocide in Rwanda."
The revelations in this memorandum came on the eve of the visit of the French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner in Rwanda. Mr. Kouchner is trying to restore diplomatic relations between France and Rwanda.
The recent declarations in Portugal by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, that "the genocide of the Tutsi of Rwanda should compel us to think, France included, about our weaknesses or mistakes", well seems, in the light of this fresh revelation to minimize the full and entire responsibility of France in the Genocide, says Farnel, whilst diluting it collectively.
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what about the Belgiums? let's get them all, I long for the day when we can get France for it's extortion of Haiti.