“Today’s message from the Rwandan Foreign Minister is an important step in bringing our two countries closer together,” a French presidential adviser said Monday in response to the Rwandan report.
Since the genocide, critics of France’s role have said that then President Francois Mitterrand did not prevent the massacres or even support the Hutu-led government that orchestrated the murders.
“The French government has a significant responsibility for making possible a foreseeable genocide,” the Rwandan government wrote in its report published on its main website. The report was prepared by Robert F. Muse and the law firm Levy Firestone Muse LLP in Washington, DC, which was hired by Rwanda to investigate France’s role in the genocide.
Rwanda’s report comes on the heels of a similar report by the French Commission released in March, which stated that France was blinded by its colonial stance on Africa to events leading up to the genocide and, as a result, a “serious” and bore overwhelming “responsibility.
The commission has acquitted France of complicity in the genocide.
Ultimately, this report cannot be the final word on the role of the French government in Rwanda. That word will come after the French government has made all its documents public and has allowed all officials to speak freely, the report said.
At the beginning of this month, France said it will open the Rwanda archives of former French President Francois Mitterrand, as part of an effort to better understand the country’s role in the African country during the genocide.