Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Niccolo101 t1_j2vl4s8 wrote

Reply to comment by Cetun in Rwanda report: France ‘complicit’ in 1994 genocide | Human Rights News by Character-Rabbit-127

>Then Rwanda happens, all the western nations are frozen. Do they send in troops and get shit on at home and abroad about being the "world police"?

No that's fair enough - but I think the crux of the issue here is that France was already operating in Rwanda. Civil war had broken out a few years earlier and France were already there, supporting the government against the rebels, training them, supplying them, etc.

Then, government-sanctioned gangs start up the genocide and France just... ignores it, because they don't want the rebels to gain ground. Hell, the French govt were aware that the "Presidential Guard", who they had trained, were actively murdering civilians (page 327).

It's one thing to jump into another nation's affairs, but it's another thing entirely to do nothing when you've already jumped in.

Seriously.

One of the stories (Page xviii) is of a terrified woman being chased by a gang. She runs out and collides with a parked car that two French soldiers are sitting in, desperate for help. One of the murderers comes up, sees the French soldiers, sees that they don't move, and drags the woman off. Later, they "kindly acknowledge" the French soldiers with a "smile and a friendly wave".

90

RevolutionaryHair91 t1_j2vrxta wrote

While I understand your point I think we also need to think in a very pragmatic way. Those soldiers in the story had orders and can't act on their own gut feelings. Taking a stance here would have had so many implications.

I don't see a way where France would not be blamed. If the French army had taken a strong stance and toppled the Rwandan power, I don't know if it could have prevented anything in terms of civil war and massacres, but it would have been sure to create a power vacuum in the middle of a bloody civil war from a western former colonial power.

I guess the best option was to leave completely, impose fast sanctions, and not get involved further. Still a massacre with a loss of influence as well for the aftermath.

27

Niccolo101 t1_j2vxbfb wrote

Point.

I am no politician and have, like, zero knowledge of the delicacies of international politics, so I can't authoritatively say what the correct action for the French government would have been. And I am not a soldier either, so I can't really fault the soldiers in the story too much - they did have orders of some kind. I have no idea what I would do when faced with such a scenario, so I'm not going to sit here in my armchair with 20/20 hindsight and say "Oh they all should have done X or Y".

But I can say that refusing to condemn the acts, lying to their own troops, not asking their allies what the hell they were doing, and even stymieing efforts to bring the perpetrators of the genocide to justice, were almost certainly not the right actions to take.

37