KIGALI // Rwanda’s justice minister has welcomed France’s declassification of documents relating to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which Kigali accuses Paris of having an indirect role.
However, Johnston Busingye said on Wednesday that Paris should ensure the declassification is “total.”
A decision to declassify the papers was signed on Tuesday and concerns “documents in the Elysee relating to Rwanda between 1990 and 1995,” which span the genocide that claimed at least 800,000 lives, a source in president Francois Hollande’s entourage said.
The declassification came on the 21st anniversary of the genocide’s outbreak on April 7, 1994.
“The Franco-Rwanda political, diplomatic and military relationship during the 1990-1995 period has been a tightly guarded domain,” said Mr Busingye.
“Perhaps the goings on at the time will finally be opened up, and it will shed light on the many dark and grey questions still unaddressed. One only hopes that the declassification is total.”
The papers, which include documents from diplomatic and military advisers as well as minutes from ministerial and defence meetings, will be available to both researchers and victims’ associations, the French presidency said.
Ties between France and Rwanda are strained as Rwandan president Paul Kagame accuses Paris of complicity in the genocide because of its support of the Hutu nationalist government that carried out the mass killings, mainly of ethnic Tutsis. Mr Kagame did not meet any French officials during his February visit to Unesco in Paris.
Paris has repeatedly denied the accusations and insists that French forces worked to protect civilians. Relations between both countries were completely frozen from 2006 to 2009.
The president of Ibuka, Rwanda’s genocide survivors’ association, called for documents to be made available as soon as possible.
“Let them do it and do so quickly, it is interesting, it is good,” said Jean-Pierre Dusingizemungu, saying it could shed light on France’s role and actions through the period of the genocide.
A French parliamentary inquiry set up to try to establish the truth about France’s role declared that Paris “was in no way implicated in the genocide against the Tutsis.”
But the two rapporteurs, one of whom is France’s current interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, admitted that French authorities made “serious errors of judgement.”
The procedure of releasing the documents is separate from some 20 ongoing judicial cases over “crimes against humanity” which have been launched in Paris.
* Agence France-Presse
