French President Emmanuel Macron inaugurated a memorial in Paris dedicated to the victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, as France seeks closer ties with the East African nation and continues to confront its role in the historic atrocity.
Speaking at the ceremony alongside Rwandan President Paul Kagame on Tuesday, Macron described the monument as “the culmination of a long and patient quest for truth.” “An unprecedented reconciliation has emerged between Rwanda and France,” Macron said. “This monument, while it is an achievement, is not an end. It is a milestone on a path we have opened.”
Dubbed “L’Archive” (The Archive), the monument consists of two black brass steles bearing an engraved tribute to the estimated 800,000 men, women and children, mostly ethnic Tutsis, massacred between April and July 1994.
The memorial’s inauguration comes five years after Macron traveled to Kigali and first acknowledged France’s failure to heed warnings of impending massacres in Rwanda. Macron has said Paris and its Western and African allies did not have the will to halt the genocide, though he has stopped short of issuing a formal apology.
Kagame hailed France’s efforts to assume its share of responsibility and praised Macron for his “courage and humanity.” “France was not alone in falling short, far from it,” Kagame said, who had long accused France of “complicity.” “Many other countries did so as well, but none has gone as far as France in setting the record straight and accepting its part in the tragedy.”
During the 1994 genocide, France was a long-standing backer of Rwanda’s Hutu-dominated government, leading to decades of tensions between the two countries. A commission set up by Macron concluded in 2021 that France bore a “serious and overwhelming” responsibility for failing to foresee the slaughter, though it found no evidence of complicity.
French courts, acting on universal jurisdiction, have convicted several Rwandans for their role in the massacre. In May, France’s judiciary ordered the resumption of a nearly two-decade investigation into accusations that the widow of late Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, who has lived in France since 1998, was involved in the genocide.
Source: www.aljazeera.com