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Tuesday, September 13, 2022

French and Rwandan researchers discuss genocide against Tutsi


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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