lateoctober

5 лет назадdiscuss

"By 1875, the French conquest was complete. The war had killed approximately 825,000 indigenous Algerians since 1830. A long shadow of genocidal hatred persisted, provoking a French author to protest in 1882 that in Algeria, 'we hear it repeated every day that we must expel the native and, if necessary, destroy him.' As a French statistical journal urged five years late, 'the system of extermination must give way to a policy of penetration.'"

- Ben Kiernan, "Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur" (2007)

This is just one short pithy quote; having done archival research concentrating on this period, I can personally testify that the amount of dry, bureaucratic references to "extermination" by French colonial administrators and professionals is nauseatingly large. If the colonizers saw what they were doing as the whole-scale extermination of a people (and those murderous ideologies coincided with the actual extermination of living human beings by the thousands), you're going to have a really tough time convincing me or anyone else that what occurred was not genocidal violence.

lateoctober

5 лет назадdiscuss

This is a common propaganda talking point propagated by the Hutu Power movement both during and after the genocide - that what occured was "spontaneous political violence" and not "targeted or planned". Demonstrably false.

To quote from Linda Melvern's excellent "Intent to Deceive: Denying the Genocide of the Tutsi":

"The genocidaires continue to maintain that the mass murder of the Tutsi resulted from a 'spontaneous uprising' by an angry population. They argue there was no genocide of the Tutsi. With no planning or preparation, they argue the intent to destroy a human group was lacking, and so with no intent, the 1948 Genocide Convention does not apply. The idea of a spontaneous slaughter is not borne out by direct witnesses, by survivors or by the collective research of internationally recognized experts."

Case closed.

lateoctober

5 лет назадdiscuss

Glawen, as deliberately misleading and propagandistic as I find your talking points, I'll provide a few responses of my own:

1) While you may not describe any of France's horrific imperial violence against its colonies as approaching genocide, as someone who has studied France's colonial history in a professional context, I'd disagree and recommend reading up on the subject. Particularly France's colonial conquest of Algeria; apologists for France's colonial history love to overlook that 1/6 to 1/3 of the native Algerian population was wiped out in the second half of the 19th century. Beyond Algeria, it requires a powerful willed ignorance to look at France's relationship to say, Haiti, or Senegal and not see inhuman, genocidal levels of extermination taking place as a matter of course.

2) More importantly, Mitterrand had a very strong reason to favor the Hutus and sit back while they eliminated the Tutsi. As Al-Jazeera mentioned in the article:

"Mitterrand and his inner circle were also fearful of the encroachment of English-speaking influence into francophone Africa under influence from Uganda and Kagame’s RPF. The report tells of French decision-makers trapped in “post-colonial” thinking who supported the “racist, corrupt and violent” regime of Habyarimana facing a Tutsi rebellion considered as directed from English-speaking Uganda."

This has been extensively documented for some time, just not officially confirmed by the French government itself - I myself wrote the following in a presentation I gave at the University of Pennsylvania ~ 2015:

---

    Il est important de souligner ici le rôle de la France et les Etats-Unis pendant ces premiers conflits entre le Front patriotique rwandais et l’armée Rwandaise, le début de la guerre civile Rwandaise. 

    Victor-Manuel Vallin écrit dans son article, « France as the Gendarme of Africa, 1960-2014 » que, je cite « During the Cold War, an economic rivalry had already started between France and (primarily) the United States…but this competition reached a new level in Rwanda. The Tutsi RPF guerrillas were arguably supported by Uganda and ‘perceived by French policy makers as hostile to France’ and ‘under Anglo-Saxon influence.’ »  

   « Uganda and Paul Kagame (leader of the RPF) had long been currying favor with the US policy-making establishment, and as such, the RPF’s incursions of the early 1990s were perceived by President Mitterand as the beginning of a regional domino effect that could eventually lead to English-speaking domination over central Africa to the detriment of France and the Francophonie. The very status of France as a power would then be at stake.»

---

Mitterrand's motive in covering up the Hutu extremists' role in shooting down President Habyarimana's plane, and in sitting on his hands while violence escalated, etc, is quite clear. Just because you seem to want to remember some sort of sanitized Mitterrand doesn't change what he knew and when. At the time, the anticipated benefits of France's actions vis-a-vis Rwanada would have appeared to be continued dominance and colonial influence over that sphere of Africa, resisting the encroachment of American spheres of influence. This would have been seen as of prime importance as France's relationship to the USA, especially when it comes to spheres of influence in Africa and the Middle East, was quite contentious at the time.

3) On the most irrelevant point you make: French soldiers "born in France" (I'm assuming you meant that repugnant dog whistle "français de souche" - for non-francophone readers, this term basically translates to "white French") not being able to "recognize a Hutu from a Tutsi". Well, first of all, they didn't need to be able to, as the Belgians instituted a national ethnic identity card system during their colonial administration of Rwanda and this system was kept and reinforced by the French once they took colonial control. This system was kept even after independence. I don't say this because I think individual French peacekeepers on the ground were complicit in atrocities, but to point out that the very ethnic stratification that fueled the genocide was a colonial imposition then ruthlessly utilized by Belgium and France to rule the country via divide and conquer. The "français de souche" in military intelligence knew very well how to distinguish one colonial subject from another, and also knew, in very fine detail, about the paramilitary activities that formed the run-up and mobilization for the genocide.

"Defenders" of France do France, French history and the French people a terrible disservice and injury by refusing to acknowledge the true, horrifying legacy of France's colonial empire.

lateoctober

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