France has no moral authority to indict Kabuye

November 17, 2008: The recent arrest in Frankfurt, Germany, of the chief of protocol of the President of Rwanda, Rose Kabuye, has brought to a head the protracted political battle between France and Rwanda since the end of the genocide in Rwanda and the coming into power of the RPF/RPA in 1994.

Her trial for alleged genocide will be both about the uses and abuses of international law; unfortunately it may be more of the latter than the former. Who can try whom?

The previous genocidaire regime of President Juvenal Habyarimana was a most trusted French ally, even among the abundant French lackeys in Africa of the post/neo-colonial/cold war era. France’s neo-colonial interests in Africa were not just at the economic, political, security and intelligence levels, but at personal and social levels with many of the leaders.

Many of these leaders denied pluralism and freedom of expression and punished any indication of dissent from their citizens harshly, but when it came to relations with France, they were cross-party.

It did not matter whether it was the Conservatives or the “Socialists”; whether the government was the result of cohabitation or alliances of the Right or the Left; the Francophone leaders maintained their alliance and influence in Paris.

The French establishment also had remarkable continuity in its Africa policy. Habyarimana was a close family friend of then President Mitterrand’s son, who was also his father’s top adviser on Africa. French citizens held senior positions in many of the former French colonies in very sensitive ministries and departments including security, intelligence, the presidential guards, finance, defence, etc.

It used to be said that the Old OAU was in reality a Franco-Africa Forum: at the height of the cold war, the France-Africa summits used to be held in the shadow of the OAU, so that whatever consensus the Africans reached could be undone from Paris. France’s claim to being a global power rested on the loyalty of its African neo-colonial allies, with very few exceptions.

A classic case is current Senegal President Abdulaye Wade who used to come at election times to taunt then President Senghor, but soon after the election he would retire home to Versailles until the wind of change of the 1990s broke the unholy alliance and France began a forcible retreat from Africa.

‘Tiny’ Rwanda was one of the first bitter confrontations that was to force France to reconsider its neo-colonial project in Africa. On October 1, 1990, rebel Rwandese soldiers who had been refugees in Uganda and in many cases, part of the Ugandan Army (NRA), launched an attack on Rwanda. Their aim was to return to the country where their parents had been forced to flee as a result of genocide, aided and abetted by the Belgians and French.

It was a David-Goliath battle and no one gave the rebels any odds of winning. Even Uganda, their only backer, initially believed that military pressure was necessary to force the Habyarimana government to negotiate with the rebels, integrate them into the army, and stop the government from discriminating against its own citizens or killing them. No one thought that the RPA/F could ever capture power.

Painstaking process
Hence the negotiations for peace under the auspices of the OAU in Arusha. It was a painstaking process, but by the time the final documents were signed, both the political and military situation had overtaken the negotiations.

Extremists within the Akazu (family cabal) that Habyarimana was hostage to, accused him of giving away too much and 100 days after the plane crash that killed him some 1,000,000 Rwandese had been slaughtered by the Interahamwe militia with the full backing and orchestration of their own leaders. The State was against its own people.

Against all odds in June 1994, the RPA/F ended genocide and defeated the army that was backed by France, Belgium and some African countries. To forestall total defeat, the French launched Operation Torquoise which provided the defeated army with an opportunity to regroup and the Interahamwe was able to march people from Rwanda into the Congo.

Fugitives and refugees came together and the former held sway in the camps, but also had the support of the crumbling state of Mobutu Sese Seko. France could not forgive the RPF/A in Rwanda and two years later, another French ally, Mobutu was removed from power by a coalition of regional military alliances led by Rwanda and Uganda.

The politics of ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ later propelled different kinds of convenient alliances. But both Mobutu and Habyarimana were consumed by the fires of xenophobia and genocide that they ignited.

Since 1994, France has been trying to wash its conscience off the genocide in Rwanda through denial and counter-narrative. Finally in 2006, a judge sitting in some obscure village in France issued an indictment against President Kagame and nine other top RPA officials for bringing down Habyarimana’s plane.

Even if this was true (and only the French and former genocidaire elements and genocide denials insist on this) how did the plane crash lead to genocide if genocide was not being planned already? Have people forgotten the famous fax to the UN saying “…we will all be killed”, which was never acted upon?

The government of Rwanda and its military and political allies, principally the French and Belgians, the OAU, Clinton’s White House, the UK Government, the UN, the Security Council and most of the powerful people and countries and institutions who could have prevented the genocide, failed the people of Rwanda.

Some of them are now overcompensating by pouring aid into Rwanda and also being too cautious or ashamed to lecture Kagame’s regime on democracy and human rights. But the French have not only been reluctant to accept their complicity.

They have been shamelessly but tirelessly trying to nail Kagame and reverse the defeat he inflicted on them not once but twice, accelerating their retreat from Africa. Politically they have continued to provide cover for genocidaire elements who still believe that they could return to power in Kigali.

Whatever our opinion of Kagame’s regime, we should not be deceived that the French indictments have anything to do with justice. It is the guilt trip of a former imperial power.

But now that they have got Lt Colonel Kabuye who went to Germany, knowing full well that she could be arrested, it is a challenge to the French to put their much vaunted evidence in the public domain. She has shown extreme courage by insisting that she should be tried in France.

The same France that has not cooperated with the ICTR in Arusha trying the genocidaire suspect leaders, is putting all efforts on knowing who killed the Chief Genocidaire.

Rwanda has its own list of wanted people and indicted French soldiers and politicians, which no one is helping it to enforce. Instead of confessing its sins and demonstrating genuine remorse before asking for forgiveness, France is demanding absolution through judicial vendetta.

Written by Tajudeen Abdul Raheem . Tajudeen is Deputy Director, Africa - United Nations Millennium Campaign.