800,000 Africans were killed by other Africans and you decide to blame the French?

There is an institutional racism against Africans by some writers that says Africans are simply not capable of making their own terrible decisions but are instead always guided by the hand of some ex-colonial eminence grise.

It's paternal and condescending and must stop if Africans are ever to feel truly equal at the discussion.

Thanks for this article - always good to hear news about there, now Rwanda's government is striving for more influence in central Africa - including influence well outside its own borders.

After 18 years it has essentially settled the central question of who was morally responsible for triggering the genocide.

I don't agree. It may settle the identification of those who shot the plane down; but I don't see how they can be held responsible for the genocide that followed. They didn't perpetrate it - and it still looks set to provide a get-out clause for the international community which was warned repeatedly about the prospect of genocide, yet refused to intervene. So no - if it incriminates particular individuals then they should be prosecuted; but I don't see how exploiting their conviction for political points can prove any less than self-defeating.

Lansing:

There is an institutional racism against Africans by some writers that says Africans are simply not capable of making their own terrible decisions but are instead always guided by the hand of some ex-colonial eminence grise.

Nonsense: that's not the claim being made here at all. The focus is on responsibility for triggering it. If it was French soldiers then they should be held accountable.

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How can Linda Melvern possibly report on a report that she has NOT seen? The report isn't released yet. It has only been shown to the lawyers associated with the case & Kigale. So either she has had the Rwandan Government version or she is reporting the Rwandan Government's press release.

The report will be released to the public on Wednesday morning. Meanwhile, it allegedly reports the location of the shooting & not who fired the actual thing if these "leaked" titbits are to be believed so it doesn't actually give a definitive answer at all.

Kigale is very media smart, the last few days there have been endles new IDs on twitter "leaking info" & fighting the quarter.... Lets just read the report first.

Meanwhile LInda Melvern is being dishonest by not being open about the sources of her article

Weren't the majority of the perpetrators of the genocide just asked to apologise and then let off? If that can happen, then shouldn't this be left behind too?

The question of who was responsible for the genocide has already been settled long ago to the satisfaction of all save the partisan and the usual suspects: the Hutu Power extremists centred around the Akazu. Most pertinently that has been settled in the ICTR tribunals whose case reports - a very sobering read - can be found here:

http://www.unictr.org/Cases/tabid/204/Default.aspx

The genocide was, per the overwhelming evidence adduced in those reports, meticulously planned by them. Against that, the question of who shot down Habyarimana's plane was always relatively peripheral, although the overwhelming likelihood was always that it was the genocidaire's, and that seems to be what is being borne out.

The French angle is likewise peripheral. But I disagree with lansing that the article blames the French for the genocide and is somehow infected with "reverse racism". That's just garbage - a naked smear tactic. Likewise the attempt to discredit the case against France by exaggerating what they are accused of. No one is accusing France of instigating the genocide. But we are still far from know the whole story of France's involvement. Everyone simply has to answer for their own actions and inactions in this utterly, utterly nauseating and appalling story according to where the evidence leads. Even when they are not the central players. And we still seem a long way from getting to the bottom of France's inglorious role in these events.

Interesting, but it does beg the question as to why it took almost twenty years for experts to make the effort of visiting the site to work out the trajectory of the missile which shot down his plane, and this only because the crew were French. You'd have thought a genocide would warrant more investigative attention.

After 18 years it has essentially settled the central question of who was morally responsible for triggering the genocide.

Who was what? Morally responsible?
It hasn't even identified who was actually responsible.

the report has provided scientific proof that, as the plane made a final approach, the assassins were waiting in the confines of Kanombe military camp

It must be a very large camp. Simple shoulder-launched missiles have a slant range of better than 3 nautical miles, and an operational height in excess of 5000 ft. An aircraft on the approach would be at 3000 ft about 5 nm out, and below 5000ft for some distance before that. The potential launch area is therefore at least 30 sq miles, so unless Kanombe is a very large camp they could well have been fired from outside the boundary. And they leave no subsequent trace of the launch.

these French officers are said to have taken away the cockpit voice recorder and black box.

And these would tell us what exactly? As the missiles would approach from behind the crew would have been totally unaware of what was happening till the first struck, at which point it might just have got as far as recording 'Oh Sh....'

This article is tinfoil hat troofer territory.

America is the bete noir of cif, but does any country come close to France for acting in naked self-interest.

This is why the publication of an expert investigation into the aircraft crash in Paris today will have such tremendous repercussions. After 18 years it has essentially settled the central question of who was morally responsible for triggering the genocide.

A grotesque proposition. Genocides are not the natural and unavoidable consequence of shooting down planes.

All that is established is from where a missile[s] was fired at an aircraft with fatal consequences.

camera

10 January 2012 9:55PM

Interesting, but it does beg the question as to why it took almost twenty years for experts to make the effort of visiting the site to work out the trajectory of the missile which shot down his plane, and this only because the crew were French. You'd have thought a genocide would warrant more investigative attention.

Obviously not if it involves the French. They were willing to sacrifice the crew in the interests of National Security.

A previous article raises questions for Sarkozy

http://http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/25/rwanda-sarkozy-visit

I was in Rwanda a few years ago and, my god, signs of the genocide are still everywhere to be seen. The scale boggles the mind. I don't know if it will ever be possible for country men to reconcile after killing close to a million of their own, but most I met do seem keen on trying. Rwanda remains an impoverished place, replete with problems. After turning our backs on them, the West really should do more to help. Just my opinion.

I agree with you're overall point. Nonetheless, what happened in Rwanda could have been prevented or curtailed with greater action from the international community. So shortly after Somalia (Black Hawk Down etc) and with no political stakes in the area the 'leaders of the free world' certainly won't going to intervene.

France did intervene to an extent however; in a purely negative manner though. They helped to shore up an ally and in the process allowed many of those involved in the genocide to escape to neighbouring (then) Zaire.

Rwanda horribly unveiled the true extent to which a genuine dedication to human rights protection existed.

Maybe France was trying to outdo its last famous feat of arms, i.e. the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior.

The truth has a way of coming out.

By far, the most tedoous journey of the truth is made after it comes out; the journey, in the face of immence adversity and competition by lies, to fertilize the egg of consciousness in the human brain.

One day we will realize that we have just killed a million innocent human beings in Iraq.
And, that the U.S. has openly declared its intentions to threaten and make war with China if they if they cannot dominate the Western Pacific.

Will we ever believe we dropped nuclear bombs on two Japenese cities, and us, the people, lapped up the tale that it saved lives?

And, that we are dropping white phosphorous on the children of Palestine, just as we dropped them on the kids in Iraq and Ganistan?

Will we ever believe that we (our governments) see these people as brown, black or yellow trash and treat them the way we do because they are racially inferior to us, a matter which secretly pleases us?

We do remember, don't we the ~Tutsis and the Hutus running around like comic matchstick men and slaughtering each other in phenominal amounts almost to our amusement and with us shaking our heads knowingly and saying,"look at those savages. They cant survive without us."

This was very much like us arming Iraq and goading it to fight our sworn enemy Iran in a sad war that claimed an estimated 1.5 million lives before we wemt in and destroued Iraq on false accusations, as we know.
We will never believe that the U.S. brought their towers down so they can go on a killing spree to establish their aleged owernership of the world's respurces. No, we never will. It hurts the brains and we reach for the confort blanket.

I say ,"we" because the pattern is set; we are all in this together in most of Western Europe and in our hyperactive green offspring, the U.S.A. Certainly in Britain, we are now the resigned followers, but still joined at the hip to the said U.S., at least our government is. Does it matter what what our people want?

Setting aside Belgium, which is just too much, we know that France slaughtered over a million Algerians in the sixties.

I will wait for the final findings of this inquiry, but I feel certain that the same patterns of wholesale greed, immorality and mass murder by France will emerge in keeping of the patterns touched on above of the dim satanic way Europe and the U.S. have had of conducting their affairs.

Thankyou.

You seem to have confirmed what many of us with a genuine interest have suspected for a long time.

The way the French military openly sided with those who committed the genocide, and their reasons for doing so, is becoming clearer.

Condemning only one side when both have committed atrocities makes you no better than the side you condemn.

I condemn those who commit atrocities, no matter which side they are on.

Failing to do so is TRULY immoral, and shows that your politics and belief allows you to turn a blind eye to the suffering and deaths of those who disagree with you.

'Satanic' ? A fantasy, just like the god or gods used by evil people to justify, condone, or actually command that other MUST die.

A monster is a monster, no matter how it prays, or which supernatural entity it worships.

Iacaro,

How can Linda Melvern possibly report on a report that she has NOT seen? The report isn't released yet. I

Agreed! There was a whole bunch of reports of the IAEA report on Iran and its nuclear ambitions, totally twisted at that. Perhaps we should hold journalists to reporting only on what they have actually witnessed or read as the case may be.

Doubting Thomasina

Two gangs live side by side.

An outsider kills the leader of one gang and tells the other gang one of the other gang killed your leader.

The gangs then fight.

This is what western countries having been doing around the world for centuries.

Africans must be allowed to make their own progress and mistakes without ANY interference. France didn't like how their former colony was going, so decided to to stir things up.

Being a veteran of the Iraq War, I agree it was complete bullshit, and the people who began it should be in prison. That said, you really need to put a little thought into what you're saying. My grandfather was a veteran of WWII, European Theater. After the Germans surrendered, his division was on orders to deploy to the Pacific. He always told me of the overwhelming feeling he'd die there. He, and nearly every other veteran I've ever talked to were glad to see the war end. The Japanese were told repeatedly to surrender, and refused to do so. America had lost 400,000 dead. Granted, that was a very small number compared to most countries involved, but they were tired of war. In hindsight, it's easy to look back and say that the bomb shouldn't have been used, for the simple fact it shouldn't have been used. It's absolutely wrong to apply today's morals and standards to that time. There had never been a war like this. In short, yes, it did save lives on both sides.
I'm not sure I've seen the U.S. openly threatening war against China. There are some issues with ships being harassed in international waters. Our military-industrial complex has a vested interest in finding an enemy lurking in every shadow. I hope we'll all soon realize that we've been played for fools for the past 60 years, though I doubt we will.
When you say "we" dropped WP on kids in Palestine, please leave me out of the equation. I'm completely against Israel having a blank check from America to do as it will, and doubly so that I'm forced to help pay for it. We're also not exclusively the offspring of Britain. We're made up of people the globe over.
As to the theory that the government brought down the towers, just stop. Anyone in his right mind refuses to believe it, because it's a lie. Hold the people that did this horrible deed accountable, and the people who did it were al Qaeda, period. You do a great disservice to the people who died. I'm not going to convince you to change your mind, but hope you will at least entertain the idea that not everything bad that happens is the fault of Americans or Europeans. Sometimes horrible people do horrible things, and no more complicated answer is needed.

@Lansing

Thank you for that classic textbook example of the "Straw Man" argument:

1. Accuse your opponents of making an absurd claim that they have not made ("The Africans cannot govern themselves");
2. Show that it is absurd;
3 Imply that therefore your opponents actual arguments are absurd, whilst avoiding mentionof them ("the French know more than they are letting on and are implicated in an assassination").

Classic textbook stuff. But the thing that baffles me is; WHY deploy such fallacious arguments? What is your motive? Have you NO interest in the truth? What are your REAL reasons for opposing the suggestion?

How have you managed to blame the French...?!

i thought itwas all the Belgian's fault for enforcing tribal delineation where there was none previously?

Is Johann Hari around to comment?

Mulefish

11 January 2012 1:15AM

This was very much like us arming Iraq and goading it to fight our sworn enemy Iran in a sad war that claimed an estimated 1.5 million lives before we wemt in and destroued Iraq on false accusations, as we know.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am quite prepared that tthere was tacit/moral support given by the US in Iraq's war v Iran. However, you would have to show some real evidence that the US ever armed Iraq - I think you will find that that was the soviet Union and France - and if you can find any evidence of collusion between the US and those two - well, good luck !

Spent a lot of time in W africa. We don't realise in the UK with our stand back approach to decolonialisation how different this issue is in France.
France likes to play kingmaker and look after its interests. Any premier elected within the CFA zone is expected to go to france and pay homage even before the government appoints all its ministers.
It is good to see a report that brings to wider attention just how complicit the french state is in internal politics of sovreign nations.
Another nation that could do with some closer scrutiny is Ivory Coast.
we have just witnessed Gbagbo being removed by the UN and rendered overseas for War Crime investigations. We have had no coverage over the french run UN operations to disenfranchise large sectors of the population at the last elections, no coverage over the blocking of the gbagbo presidency at its inception, or the movers behind the coup against him in late '99 that failed in the face of popular uprising. The coup leader Guei was widely believed to have french support within the country; As has Alessane currently.
In the 90's Gbagbo was something equivalent to Tsvangerai in zimbabwe. However, he never hitched his bandwagon to the French as he felt it was not in the interests of the country and within the country at that time it was already recognised that if he ever got to power the first thing that would happen is a french sponsored campaign to remove him. Some evenhanded reporting on the region in general would be nice to see; to often what is published as news in the anglo press strongly resembles no more than a press release vetted by paris.

I'm not sure why this report was necessary. The bloody trail always pointed towards France, something that was never doubted in Brussels, from the moment news of the assassination broke.

You'd have thought a genocide would warrant more investigative attention.

I believe it is illegal in Rwanda to question the government's version of how and why the genocide happened.

What is always forgotten is that in 1990 Uganda invaded Rwanda. Around 800,000 peasant farmers were displaced in the war. The 'international community' failed to condemn the illegal invasion. So if there are going to be investigations about 'triggers' for the Rwandan genocide it might be worth investigating why
our dear leaders didn't sanction Ugandan President Museveni in 1990 instead of supporting him and his
dictatorship.

Um, Rwanda's had plenty of help from the West since the genocide. It's also done a pretty good job of helping itself (not least through launching two regional wars that've cost millions of lives). Kagame's long excelled in exploiting Western governments' guilt for failing to intervene in the genocide.

Mulefish

11 January 2012 1:15AM

This was very much like us arming Iraq and goading it to fight our sworn enemy Iran in a sad war that claimed an estimated 1.5 million lives before we wemt in and destroued Iraq on false accusations, as we know.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am quite prepared that tthere was tacit/moral support given by the US in Iraq's war v Iran. However, you would have to show some real evidence that the US ever armed Iraq - I think you will find that that was the soviet Union and France - and if you can find any evidence of collusion between the US and those two - well, good luck !

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_war

@Lansing

Thank you for that classic textbook example of the "Straw Man" argument...

.....What is your motive? Have you NO interest in the truth? What are your REAL reasons for opposing the suggestion?

My thoughts exactly. The other point is the number of people recommending Lansing's post, for whom only ignorance is the best excuse. As for racism.....

Taken on its face, it would appear from those "recommends" that the majority of the Guardian's readership, no doubt mostly white and relatively well off Europeans, seem to think there is nothing at all to criticise in a European power in pursuit of delusional dreams of a post-Imperial francophonie
(a) arming, training, embedding its troops in uinits of, and providing diplomatic cover for, one side in an African civil war;
(b) continuing those policies to the point of trying to actively undermine UN efforts to broker a peace agreement (the Arusha accords) between the two sides by actively campaigning against a UN monitoring mission which the local UN officers deemed essential;
(c) disparaging the posts from those same officers that a campaign of genocide was being prepared by Hutu power extremists;
(d) even after that campaign had begun continuing to an unacceptable degree those same policies to support that side; and finally
(e) to organise an intervention (Operation Turquoise) to cover the retreat of the genocidaires and give a large number of prominent genocidaires refuge in France.

That would seem quite enough to be going on with. Even you don't believe France was directly involved in the assassination of Hayarimana, which I don't.

As noted, Lansing has raised the question of white racist attitudes towards Africans on this thread. I, personally, would like to hear the views of the Tutsi and moderate Hutu genocide survivors on that question. And in particular whether they seen any connection between the indifferent attitudes of the international community to the genocide as it unfolded (and, in the case of France, its active connivance to the extent just stated) and the indifferent and ignorant attitudes on display on this thread. And what they think might lie behind those attitudes.

We know no such thing! The fog of uncertainty and lies still swirls around the events preceding (and following) the 1994 genocide. Probably the truth about who killed Habyarimana will never be known, though the finger of suspicion will continue to point at the RPF. Any confident attempt to apportion blame is suspect because of the complex motives of all sides involved. All that this most recent enquiry tells us is that France is anxious to repair relations with Kigali, which is itself not uninteresting.

Here's a link to a rather good article from the London Review of Books, in which SW Smith surveys the turbid stew of half-truths and possibilities surrounding the Rwandan genocide.

I was in Rwanda just before the genocide. One shouldn't underestimate the latent violence that existed.

When in Kigali - . You didn't go out at night. you could sometimes hear screams in the distance. (nights). All the houses were very defensive, even the poorer ones had outside walls of that sort of cactus that burnt if touched. In the relatively central parts of town all the windows were barricaded.

I wouldn't know who started it, but once the genocide was going, there was no one with enough authority to stop it.

This event in rumours & lies 6 April 1994 of the President Juvenal Habyyarimana.The identity of the totail missible.

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I might add that, if the French government has been anxious to cover its own involvement in the genocide and to implicate the RPF in sparking the violence, the British and American authorities have been equally anxious to exonerate the RPF, downpay violence committed against Hutu by the Tutsi militia, and to cosy up to Kagame (Rwanda has adopted English as its national language and joined the Commonwealth, signifying a shift in its geopolitical alignment from the Francophone to the Anglo-sphere).

The great imperial game is being played out between France and L'Anglosaxonie , with Rwanda's recent past as the geopolitical football. If France acted disgracefully in the past, Britain is doing little better now, with its paternalistic willingness to overlook the human rights abuses and political oppression associated with the Kagame regime. And if French hacks like Pierre Pean attempt to defend the actions of France by attacking the RPF, English hacks like Linda Melvern attempt to defend Kagame and Britain by defending it.

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Read history, and you might get a clue on *who* created the ethnicisation of African people. Stop talking about things you don't understand.

RichJames

Lansing:

There is an institutional racism against Africans by some writers that says Africans are simply not capable of making their own terrible decisions but are instead always guided by the hand of some ex-colonial eminence grise.

Nonsense: that's not the claim being made here at all. The focus is on responsibility for triggering it. If it was French soldiers then they should be held accountable.

I agree that that is not the claim but it clearly has the effect of diverting attention away from the genocide and has the implication that it was the consequence of colonial meddling.

In fact I am not sure what the report establishes Because "the the assassins were waiting in the confines of Kanombe military camp – the highly fortified home of Rwanda's French-trained elite unit known as the Presidential Guard" it does not follow that they were acting under French orders. I can certainly agree that "the story is far from over". Itshould be fully investigated but as far as I am concerned even if the jury is still out as to who actually was responsible for the assassination it is most unlikely that the French had any involvement in the genocide.

themissing

An outsider kills the leader of one gang and tells the other gang one of the other gang killed your leader. The gangs then fight. This is what western countries having been doing around the world for centuries.

Except there is no strong evidence to support your conspiracy theories. It is also unconsciously racist implying that developing peoples are extremely biddable and will always do what they are told by the Western imperialists.

Except there is no strong evidence to support your conspiracy theories.

Not so much.

It is also unconsciously racist implying that developing peoples are extremely biddable and will always do what they are told by the Western imperialists.

Sadly, it lacks that implication: all that it implies is that there was a difference in power, and the more powerful side imposed its malevolent intentions.

I agree that that is not the claim but it clearly has the effect of diverting attention away from the genocide and has the implication that it was the consequence of colonial meddling.

Presumably, whether the genocide was the consequence of colonial meddling is an empirical question that can be settled by looking at the evidence. Dismissing it, when there is some good evidence in its favour, seems a little hasty.

Because "the the assassins were waiting in the confines of Kanombe military camp – the highly fortified home of Rwanda's French-trained elite unit known as the Presidential Guard" it does not follow that they were acting under French orders. I can certainly agree that "the story is far from over".

They needn't have been acting under French orders for culpability to follow. If it turns out that the French knew of this, and that they did nothing, then culpability is in play.

Itshould be fully investigated but as far as I am concerned even if the jury is still out as to who actually was responsible for the assassination it is most unlikely that the French had any involvement in the genocide.

I think Operation Blue Turquoise establishes French involvement.

And in particular whether they seen any connection between the indifferent attitudes of the international community to the genocide as it unfolded (and, in the case of France, its active connivance to the extent just stated) and the indifferent and ignorant attitudes on display on this thread. And what they think might lie behind those attitudes.

As opposed to the attitudes of the nations of Africa, who despite being armed to the teeth in many cases and going on about African solidarity at every turn seem to think it is the responsibility of white people in distant lands to stop one group of Africans from murdering another?

The minute an intervention went wrong (and it would) we would have had people claiming the whole thing was a planned conspiracy to justify the re-colonisation of Rawanda for any resources.

An outsider kills the leader of one gang and tells the other gang one of the other gang killed your leader. The gangs then fight. This is what western countries having been doing around the world for centuries.

No, thats the the plot of The Warriors.