KIGALI, Rwanda
French and Rwandan researchers
are gathered in Kigali for a conference on Genocide against Tutsi.
President Paul Kagame has
hailed this effort describing it as a major milestone in the relations between
Rwanda and France.
“A scientific meeting on this
topic, bringing together French and Rwandan researchers, would have been almost
unimaginable. We have turned the page to a new chapter in our relations, which
is now being written,” President Kagame said in a statement to the international
colloquium.
He said the historic visit
last year to Kigali by French President Emmanuel Macron they have turned the
page to a new chapter in the relations which according to him is now being
written. Working entirely independently, and using different sources and methods,
the teams led by Prof. Vincent Duclert and Robert Muse, reached conclusions
that broadly reinforced one another, President Kagame said.
“It is ultimately the task of
professional historians and researchers to document the historical record for
future generations,“ He added.
“This conference according to
President Kagame is therefore of the highest significance, with the first
session here in Kigali and another next year in Paris.”
Last Year, President Macron
while in Kigali said his country bears a responsibility for hundreds of
thousands of deaths, but was not complicit.
He asked for “the gift of
forgiveness” from the people of Rwanda after admitting for the first time that
France bears a “terrible responsibility” for the deaths of hundreds of
thousands in the 1994 genocide.
Macron spoke at the Genocide
Memorial in Kigali, the capital, saying that France had not been complicit in
the genocide but had made errors of judgment that had appalling consequences.
“By engaging … in a conflict
in which it had no prior experience, France failed to heed the warnings and
overestimated its ability to stop something that was already under way,” Macron
said. “Only those who have passed through the darkness can perhaps forgive,
make us the gift forgiveness.”
Rwanda has over the past two decades accused France of complicity in killing more than a million lives during the 1994 genocide against Tutsi.
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