Note du ministère des Affaires étrangères. Attentat du 6 avril 1994

Marlaud, Jean-Michel

25 avril 1994

19940425

Note du ministère des Affaires étrangères. Attentat du 6 avril 1994

NoteMinAffEtr25041994.pdf

1211318 bytes

5

Quai d'Orsay

MIP

FR

The attack which cost the life of President Habyarimana, and which is the immediate cause of the events that Rwanda is experiencing today, is probably the work of the RPF. The future of this country and of the sub-region depends on the balance that will be established, on the basis of which a political agreement will have to be negotiated.

This note from Jean-Michel Marlaud, French Ambassador to Rwanda repatriated to France, aims to accuse the RPF which is immediately declared the author of the attack against President Habyarimana. However, it contains several findings that contradict its thesis. He admits that the missile fire left Kanombe where there is a military camp of the Rwandan army. The latter, he writes, "could have found a way to sabotage the accords at a lower cost to her", which seems to admit that the government army refused the peace accords. Moreover, his description of the events is almost accurate: "The death of the President and the main army and security officials, triggering the cycle of murderous reprisals carried out by part of the Presidential Guard in against the opposition and the Tutsi, gave a pretext for the military intervention of the RPF". He therefore recognizes that the RPF did not go on the attack immediately after the attack on the president's plane but rather to stop the massacres undertaken by the presidential guard. He further clarifies "that on the announcement of the death of the President, the abuses immediately began and provided a basis for the armed intervention of the RPF". The French ambassador therefore recognizes that the RPF has engaged in the fight against the perpetrators of the genocide. But he makes this observation and then reverses the roles. His full sentence is this: "If it is true that when the President's death was announced, the exactions immediately began and provided a basis for the RPF's armed intervention, today the situation is rather the opposite: the Hutu, as long as they feel that the RPF is trying to take power, will react with ethnic massacres". If the RPF was justified in resuming the fight against the abuses at the beginning, now, in the eyes of the ambassador, it is in some way responsible for the ethnic massacres because it "is trying to take power". Judging, after a long far-fetched demonstration in the absence of material evidence, that the RPF is responsible for the attack and the continuation of the massacres, the French ambassador seems to admit the legitimacy of the killings perpetrated by the Hutu to prevent the RPF from taking power. This strategy of killing Tutsis from within to counter a military attack by Tutsi refugees abroad is not new in Rwanda. It was often practiced, especially at Christmas 1963. It was explicitly mentioned by President Grégoire Kayibanda on March 11, 1964. But what is serious here, is that this strategy of genocide, which is a strategy of deterrence by the machete, is endorsed by the representative of France, a country which also claims a strategy of deterrence to defend its national territory. Just as it was legitimate to destroy Moscow with nuclear weapons if the Red Army invaded France, so it would be legitimate in the eyes of the ambassador for the Hutu, the only true Rwandans, to massacre the Tutsi who invade them from Uganda.

https://francegenocidetutsi.fr/fgtshow.php?num=30062