“No words to add” or “to subtract”. Emmanuel Macron repeated this Sunday comments made on May 27, 2021 about the Rwandan genocide, when he said he had come to “recognize” France’s “responsibilities” in the massacres during a trip to Kigali. “France assumes everything and exactly that in the terms that I used” that day, insisted the Head of State in a video broadcast this Sunday on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the 1994 genocide, perpetrated against the Tutsis.
“We have all abandoned hundreds of thousands of victims to this infernal closed door,” he admitted in 2021, during his trip. “I have no words to add, no words to take away from what I told you that day,” the head of state insisted on Sunday. On Thursday, he had already estimated that Paris, “which could have stopped the genocide with its Western and African allies, did not have the will”, according to comments reported by the Élysée.
Also read: Thirty years after the genocide in Rwanda, justice is still pending on France's role
After decades of tensions between Paris and Kigali, going as far as a breakdown in diplomatic relations between the two countries between 2006 and 2009, a rapprochement was made possible following the establishment of a commission by Emmanuel Macron, which concluded in 2021 that France had “heavy and overwhelming responsibilities”, while ruling out complicity.