Coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, France and the United Kingdom have opened up two parallel investigations. On April 6th 1994, the shooting down of Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana sparked the beginning of a highly efficient onslaught on the Tutsi minority and moderate Hutu population by the extremist Interahamwe militia, resulting in the deaths of nearly one million Tutsis. Though both investigations focus on the perpetrators, they are wholly different in scale and implication.
The UK investigation, lead by Scotland Yard, is centered on five individuals of supposed Hutu ethnic background who entered the country sometime after the events of 1994. The French investigation — ordered by President Emmanuel Macron himself — seeks to understand the role of the French government before and during the atrocities which led to the death of 800,000 Tutsis, and arguably, the death of up to a million mostly Hutus in reprisals that occurred in the years to follow in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In opening his investigation, President Macron has tacitly admitted France’s complicity in the genocide. While this may seem insignificant, it is perhaps the most critical occurrence to date in the ongoing discussion about colonial crimes. Former colonial powers have often come up far short of apology let alone reparations.
What is different about the Macron investigation — as opposed to Germany’s half-hearted offer to return the skulls of murdered Herero people to Namibia and offers by the British Museum to loan stolen artifacts — is that it will focus on the country’s involvement in crimes that took place well after Rwanda gained independence in 1961.
Initially a German colony before Belgium took control following World War I, Ruanda-Urundi (now Rwanda and Burundi) was a centuries-old kingdom ruled by a Tutsi monarchy. As ethnic violence between the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority increased throughout the 1950s, Belgium split the colony in two as the Hutu majority voted to end monarchical rule in favor of forming a republic. Belgian efforts to establish a peaceful power-sharing government failed and ethnic tensions, which had always been exacerbated by colonial rule, continued to flare in the following decades.
This investigation could set a new standard of colonial powers finally owing up (and paying out) for their worst actions on the African continent or former colonial territories, expanding the discussion far beyond the purview of the colonial period alone.
Moreover, it is worth pondering how an admission of guilt by a former colonial power might impact the increasingly authoritarian Rwandan government of President Kagame. Rwanda’s relationship with France has been strained ever since the events of the 1994 before which France sold arms to the Hutu government despite an arms-embargo. A wealthy elite class of Rwandans, however, has never completely relinquished its cultural ties to France even following the 2008 change of the nation’s official language from French to English and Rwanda’s joining of the British Commonwealth – one of only two nations to do so.
Kagame has made frequent hay of critics and journalists who have questioned his authoritarian tendencies primarily by citing the genocide as an example of past Western indifference that necessarily, albeit rhetorically, proves present hypocrisy. If there was anyone who could make the word ‘genocide’ ring nearly hollow, it is the leader of a country who repeatedly silences opposition with charges of “genocide denial.” In his opportunely-timed investigation, President Macron may blunt President Kagame’s oft-employed diversion tactic of citing Western apathy and complicity during the most tragic episode of Rwanda’s past.
While the Macron investigation is certainly welcome as a necessary — though unfortunately late — step towards reconciliation, it is unlikely to result in any real restitution for Rwandans or penalty for France beside what occurs optically. Notably, Rwanda’s self-investigation into crimes committed in Rwanda failed to produce results – more can hardly be expected to come of France’s investigation.
PHOTO: President Kagame at the 2015 World Economic Forum in Davos. Source: Flickr // World Economic Forum.
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