Charles Onana, 60, author of "Rwanda: The Truth about Operation Turquoise" published in 2019, faces charges of denial and minimising of the Rwanda genocide.
A court is France was due to open the trial of an author accused of downplaying the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi today.
Charles Onana, 60, author of "Rwanda: The Truth about Operation Turquoise" published in 2019, faces charges of denial and minimising of the Rwanda genocide.
At least a million people, the majority of them minority ethnic Tutsi, were slaughtered inside 100 days between April 7 and July 4, 1994, in Rwanda.
The ethnic killing is officially recognised by the UN as a genocide but French-Cameroonian writer Onana said it was not a premeditated act but a violent struggle for power.
Mr Onana said the idea that the Hutu government had planned a genocide in Rwanda was "one of the biggest scams" of the last century.
The 60-year-old writer and his publishing director at Editions du Toucan, Damien Serieyx, were sued four years ago by NGO Survie, and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) for "publicly contesting a crime against humanity".
Camille Lesaffre, campaign manager for Survie, told AFP the trial of Onana will be historic, since there is not yet any case law strictly speaking related to Rwanda.
"We will mainly base ourselves on case law related to the Holocaust," the AFO quoted Lesaffre as saying.
Under French law, it is an offence to deny or "minimise" the fact of any genocide that is officially recognised by France.
The trial comes after the French government of Emmanuel Macron largely mended fences with Rwanda.
French troops were in Rwanda in 1994 and have for years been accused of complicity in the pogrom with the Paul Kagame government variously implicating them of watching on as the Hutu slaughtered Tutsi.
In 2021, French President Emmanuel Macron apologised to Rwandans for France's role in the genocide.
He denied France had played a part in the genocide but admitted they had not heeded warnings of impending killings and had for too long "valued silence over examination of the truth".
Writing in Rwanda's The New Times on September 30, Tom Ndahiro, an author and researcher at the Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies Centre, said Mr Onana's denialism is not a mere scholarly error.
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"It is a deliberate attempt to exonerate those responsible for the mass murder of over one million people," Mr Ndahiro wrote.
Charles Onana must face the consequences of his actions. Denying or complicating genocide is an affront to justice. This man should be held accountable and put behind bars for spreading dangerous misinformation.@FerdinandUWIMAN https://t.co/k99WnseIUJ-- Agaba Olivier (@Agaba_250) October 7, 2024
He said Onana's denialism aligns with a broader pattern seen among other genocide deniers who aim to shift the burden of guilt from the perpetrators to the victims.
"He often frames his arguments as a quest for "truth" or "balance," suggesting that the widely accepted history of the genocide is part of a grand conspiracy by the RPF and its supporters to rewrite history," he added.
"This approach not only diminishes the suffering of the victims but also reinforces a dangerous form of historical revisionism that seeks to undermine the legal and moral consensus that emerged after the genocide.
However, Mr Onana's lawyer, Emmanuel Pire, insists that the controversial writer does not question that genocide took place, or that Tutsi were particularly targeted.
Mr Pire told the AFP news agency that the book in question was "the work of a political scientist based on 10 years of research to understand the mechanisms of the genocide before, during and after".
Monday's trial is only the second case of denying the Rwandan genocide to come to trial in France.
