“France and its Western and African allies could have stopped the genocide in Rwanda, but they chose not to.” This came on the lips of French President Emmanuel Macron, a few days after the thirtieth anniversary of the start of the Hutu militia attack that led to one of the most tragic events of the twentieth century. The President of the Elysee, at the invitation of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, will not attend the ceremony next Sunday. However, Macron will speak in a video message that “will be published on social media,” according to his staff, who expected its salient content: “The head of state will remember that when the phase of the total extermination of the Tutsis began, the international community had the necessary means to know and act thanks to its knowledge of the genocide – As Armenian and Holocaust survivors revealed to us – and that France, which could have stopped the genocide with its Western and African allies, did so. They confirmed from the Elysee that he did not have the will to do so.

Macron's thinking has evolved

In May 2021, Macron's trip to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, and the words said on that occasion brought the French and Rwandan presidents, Paul Kagame, closer together. The issue of France's role before, during and after the genocide remained a controversial topic for years, even reportedly leading to the severing of diplomatic relations between the two countries between 2006 and 2009. Le Monde. At the memorial in the Rwandan capital, Macron announced three years ago that he had arrived “Acknowledging France's responsibility for the genocide, in which more than 800,000 unarmed civilians were killed, most of them from the Tutsi minority. The massacre was committed between April and July 1994 (Socialist President François Mitterrand sat in the Elysee). “We have all left hundreds of thousands of victims in This is hell Close the house», Macron exclaimed three years ago.

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