While Paris was often implicated in the Rwandan genocide, perpetrated in 1994, Édouard Balladur has just decided
"to authorize, when the time comes, the free consultation of the documents (...) that he has deposited in the National Archives" on this tragedy.
Then prime minister of the second cohabitation (1993-1995), under François Mitterrand, he always qualified as “lies” the accusations brought against France by the current president, Paul Kagame.
“The genocide that decimated Rwanda in 1994, torn apart by an endless civil war between Hutu and Tutsi, resulted in the massacre of around a million Rwandans, most of them Tutsi.
Faced with what was a real genocide, (…), I was convinced that it was necessary to both protect and provide humanitarian aid to threatened populations, whatever they may be ”
, says Édouard Balladur.
Who adds:
“The genocide has stopped.
Many voices have been raised around the world to ask for the extension of our intervention.
We refused it… ”
And the former Prime Minister concluded:
“ A research commission chaired by Prof. Vincent Duclert draws up its report on what really happened (…) This report will soon be published.
I have already decided to authorize the opening of my archives when the time comes (…) so that everyone can freely see what our action was and its results.
"