French President Emmanuel Macron has asked Rwandans to forgive France for its role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which about 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus died.
Speaking at the genocide memorial in Rwanda’s capital Kigali, he said France had not heeded warnings of impending carnage and had for too long “valued silence over examination of the truth”.
But France had not been an accomplice in the killings, Mr Macron added.
Rwanda’s leader praised his speech.
President Paul Kagame said, “His words were something more valuable than an apology. They were the truth.” He called it “an act of tremendous courage”.
In March, a French expert commission found that France under the late President François Mitterrand had borne “heavy and overwhelming responsibility” for the genocide but had not been complicit. The report said France had been “blind” to genocide preparations.
French President Emmanuel Macron has asked Rwandans to forgive France for its role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which about 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus died.
Speaking at the genocide memorial in Rwanda’s capital Kigali, he said France had not heeded warnings of impending carnage and had for too long “valued silence over examination of the truth”.
But France had not been an accomplice in the killings, Mr Macron added.
Rwanda’s leader praised his speech.
President Paul Kagame said, “His words were something more valuable than an apology. They were the truth.” He called it “an act of tremendous courage”.
In March, a French expert commission found that France under the late President François Mitterrand had borne “heavy and overwhelming responsibility” for the genocide but had
-not been complicit. The report said France had been “blind” to genocide preparations.
Mitterrand had close ties to former Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu.
“The killers who stalked the swamps, the hills, the churches, did not have the face of France. France was not an accomplice,” Mr Macron said.
But he said that in 1994 “France did not understand that by wanting to block a regional conflict or a civil war, it stood de facto by a genocidal regime”.
-BBC
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