RWANDA AND ALGERIA ACCUSE FRANCE FOR GENOCIDES IN AFRICA
By Mukremin TASCI, JTW
Journal of Turkish Weekly
Nov 28 2006
Rwandan President Paul Kagame on Saturday repeated accusations that
France was implicated in his country’s 1994 genocide in a television
interview. Algerian President and Prime Minister also accused France
last month of committing genocide in Algeria during the colony time.
"France is implicated in the genocide, there is no doubt about that,
no one can have doubts," Mr. Kagame told French TV channel i-Tele in
an interview broadcast on Saturday.
Rwanda accuses France of training soldiers it knew would later commit
genocide though France denies any wrongdoing, saying its military
intervention helped Rwandans.
Mr Kagame told i-Tele:
"On the extent, the degrees of implications, the people involved,
the way in which French institutions were involved, these are aspects
which will be examined… France is a superpower so it thinks that it
is always right even when it is wrong… We have a will and a reason
to fight for our rights and we will."
The latest diplomatic flare-up between the two countries arose earlier
this week when French anti-terrorism magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere
called for Kagame to stand trial at a U.N. court over the killing of a
former Rwandan president. Mr Bruguiere also issued arrest warrants for
nine of Mr Kagame’s associates over the 1994 shooting down of a plane
carrying former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana. Rwanda says
that the decision is politically motivated and counter French attack
against the Rwanda claims. Mr Kagame has denounced Mr Bruguiere’s
comments as the `justice of bullies, arrogance’.
* ALGERIA ALSO ACCUSES FRANCE
Not only Rwanda, but also Algeria also says that the French caused
genocide in Africa. Relations between France and Algeria remain
strained due to the Algerian Genocide committed by France during the
colonial period. French President Jacques Chirac has rebuffed Algerian
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s demand that France apologize for its
"long, brutal and genocidal" rule. Bouteflika officially named the
French period as "cultural and political genocide of the Algerian
identity".
During a visit to Algiers in the second week of November 2006, French
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the leading ruling party candidate
in the 2007 presidential vote, said he couldn’t "ask children to
apologize for the faults of their fathers." Sarkozy and his party
accuses Turkey for the Ottoman past and Sarkozy strongly support
a bill which makes crime to reject the Armenian genocide crimes in
Turkey. Algerians argue that France should first face with its own
crimes before judging the other countries.
Algerian historians estimate that more than 1,5 million Algerians
were massacred by the French Army.
The Algerian war for independence began in 1954, and the French army
largely crushed the rebels by 1958. Civilian massacres and the use of
torture undercut support for the war in France, resulting in General
Charles de Gaulle’s decision to quit Algeria.
* FRANCE DOES NOT WANT TO APOLOGIZE
French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy was on an official visit to
France’s former colony Algeria last week. Sarkozy placed a wreath at
a monument for Algerians killed in their war for independence and
then he visited a monastery in Tibhirine where seven French monks
where killed in 1996. In only eight years, 1.5 million Algerians died
during their country’s fight for independence between 1954 and 1962.
Torture was widespread.
The Algerian government has urged France to apologize for the killings
and suffering during 130 years of colonial rule.
While the Algerian government has called on the French to recognize
"the number of victims and the looting of riches" and "the deletion of
national identity," Sarkozy preferred to talk about the "dark moments"
of the colonial era and suffering on both sides.
Sarkozy, a leading candidate for the French center-right political
world to run for president next year, has strongly supported France’s
recent notorious bill criminalizing the denial of an Armenian genocide
at the hands of the Turks during World War I.
During his trip Sarkozy preferred to focus on an initiative to lift
visa restrictions for Algerians traveling to Europe. Both the French
interior minister and the Algerian leadership avoided talking too
much on the two topics cooling relations between the two countries:
Algeria’s call for an apology and the postponement of a 2005 bilateral
friendship treaty.
The treaty was pushed aside after France passed a law last year
requiring textbooks to talk about the "positive side" of French
colonialism. An embarrassed Chirac quashed the law but relations
have suffered.
Instead, both sides preferred to talk about Sarkozy’s trip in terms
of a "necessary" friendship between the two countries "condemned"
to a mutual future, said Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.