By Jean-Pierre A
On Tuesday, 2 June, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, inaugurated a memorial along the River Seine in Paris to honour the victims of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
President Macron said the memorial, dedicated to the victims of the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi in Rwanda, is a living place. He added: “It preserves the memory of the past and looks to the future in the relationship between Rwanda and France. It is up to us to pass on this legacy with rigour, dignity, truth and justice.”
In May 2021, during a visit to Rwanda, Macron recognised his country’s responsibility in the Rwandan genocide and said he hoped for forgiveness, seeking to reset relations after years of Rwandan accusations that France was complicit in the 1994 slaughter of an estimated 800,000 people, most of them ethnic Tutsis. However, he did not apologise.
This followed the findings of a commission established by Macron, which concluded in March 2021 that France had been blinded by its colonial mindset in the events leading up to the genocide and bore a “serious and overwhelming” responsibility for failing to foresee the slaughter.
President Kagame said the monument was not a validation because none was needed. He added that the memorial tells the truth.
“The memorial before us is powerful because it sets the truth in stone and protects it from the heartlessness of time by instructing the living,” Kagame said.
He added that the memorial in Paris would stand “as a mark of respect for the dignity of Rwandans and our history.”
Speaking at a dinner hosted by President Macron, Kagame said the two countries had chosen to look forward.
“We have chosen to look forward and write a new chapter together, and that choice is already bearing fruit,” he said.
During the 1994 Genocide, France sent troops to Rwanda under what was known as Operation Turquoise. In the past, some genocide survivors and Rwandan officials accused France of doing little to stop the genocide, particularly in the areas where its troops were deployed.
The memorial, located on the banks of the River Seine in the heart of Paris, is named L’Archive. It was designed by Portuguese artist Grada Kilomba. It consists of two black steles and bears an engraved tribute to the hundreds of thousands of men, women and children who were massacred between April and July 1994.
