Macron under fire for ignoring Rwandan genocide commemorations

When a rally of leaders will gather this weekend in Kigali to mark the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, there will be a flagrant absence: French President Emmanuel Macron.

Several African leaders and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel are expected at events commemorating the mbadacre of about 800,000 Rwandans, the majority of minority Tutsis killed in a dark chapter in the postcolonial history of the country. 39; Africa.

Macron was also invited, an approach that had been hailed as a sign of a fresh start in relations after two decades of unrest over Rwanda's claims that France was complicit in the genocide.

Macron, aged forty-one, has come forward as the face of a new generation of French politicians freed from the country's troubled past in Africa.

But he refused the invitation of President Paul Kagame, disappointing those who hoped for a great gesture of reconciliation on the French side.

"He did not have the guts to carry out the process," François Gaulme, a researcher at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), told AFP.

If he had agreed, Macron would have been only the second French president to visit Rwanda since the genocide, which has long darkened Franco-Rwandan relations.

Kagame, who led Tutsi rebel forces overthrowing the Hutu genocidal regime, accuses France of supporting Hutu ethnic forces behind most of the mbadacre and helping some of those responsible. to escape.

French President François Mitterrand then backed the Hutu-led government in French-speaking Rwanda – a former Belgian colony – to counter the influence of neighboring English-speaking Uganda, the home of Rwandan Tutsi rebels in exile.

France has always denied being complicit in the genocide, saying that the French soldiers mandated by the UN deployed in Rwanda in the last weeks of the genocide had done their best under difficult circumstances and had saved thousands of lives.

During a visit to Kigali in 2010, former President Nicolas Sarkozy broke ground admitting that Paris had committed "serious errors of judgment" in Rwanda.

Without being excused, this admission was perceived as a breakthrough, pushing Kagame, who had already broken off his ties, to go to the French capital a year later.

& # 39; Neo-colonialist past & # 39;

The relationship once again hit turbulence under Socialist President Francois Hollande, but the election of Macron paved the way for a new chapter.

During a visit to Paris last year, Kagame seemed impressed by the young Frenchman, congratulating him later on having adopted a "cooler" approach to Africa, less paternalistic than his predecessors.

"It changes the neo-colonial positions of the past," he told Young Africa magazine.

Macron himself promised a more "pragmatic" approach to Rwanda and put all his weight to support the Rwandan candidate at the head of the International Organization of the Francophonie (OIF), who then landed the job.

However, at the invitation of Kigali, the Cambodian President raised scheduling problems and said that Hervé Berville, a young Rwandan deputy who was orphaned during the genocide and adopted by a French family, would represent France. .

Macron will meet with representatives of Ibuka, a genocide survivors' badociation – the first meeting of its kind between the group and a French leader.

Unruffled Kagame

Analysts attributed his decision not to travel to Kigali to divisions underway in France over whether Paris really had a cause to answer about the genocide.

"It would have been difficult for him to go to the 25th anniversary without apologizing to France," AFP Antoine Glaser, former editor of an information bulletin on the subject, told AFP. Africa, The Letter of the Continent.

But doing this "would have offended any part of the French army that considers that she did a good job, that she was alone there in a complex situation," he said. added.

Hélène Dumas, a historian specializing in the Rwandan genocide at the French National Center for Scientific Research, expressed her disappointment.

"We were hoping that President Macron would deliver a speech of truth to which he could not go back," she said. "We came back to where we started, it's a pity."

Alain Gauthier, president of an badociation that spent nearly two decades searching for French nationals suspected of involvement in the genocide, called Macron's absence of "almost indecent".

Glaser and Gaulme indicated that they did not expect Macron's no-show to threaten the fragile rapprochement between Paris and Kigali.

"Macron wants to see Rwanda shine," said Gaulme, referring to the dramatic economic recovery under Kagame, a progress clouded by accusations of authoritarianism.

Vivid to attack France about perceived sniffs, Kagame did not seem angry at Macron's absence.

"We have always asked our partners (…) to allow us to freely decide how to act, so it is normal that they are also free to make their own decisions," he said. he told Young Africa.