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The Times - France and genocide: the murky truth
How far was Mitterrand’s Government involved in the slaughter of hundred of thousands of Rwandans? By Linda Melvern (the author of Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide)

There is remarkable television footage shot in the first days of the genocide in Rwanda. It shows a large room in the French Embassy in Kigali filled floor to ceiling with shredded documents. This was probably the paper trail that might have revealed the depth of involvement between the Elysée Palace and the Hutu faction responsible for massacring hundreds of thousands of Tutsi and opposition Hutu.

This week Rwanda’s commission of inquiry published its findings into the role of France in the genocide of 1994. The report - the fruit of two years’ work that includes the testimony of 638 witnesses, including survivors and perpetrators of genocide - is damning. It says that certain French politicians, diplomats and military leaders - including President François Mitterrand - were complicit in genocide. The French authorities knowingly aided and abetted what happened by training Hutu militia and devising strategy for Rwanda’s armed forces. Training and funding was also given to Rwandan intelligence services on how to establish a database later used to draw up a “kill list” of Tutsi.

The most shocking allegations come from survivors who allege that French soldiers participated in the massacres of Tutsi. These soldiers were a part of Operation Turquoise, a French military intervention in June 1994, an ostensibly humanitarian mission that had the backing of the UN Security Council.

The Rwanda report directly contradicts an earlier investigation by the French Senate, which reported in 1998 that France had in no way “incited or encouraged” the genocide. But it also builds on the Senate’s earlier work, which had revealed how some French actions had been “regrettable”, and “the threat of a possible genocide had been underestimated”. …

The French Senate discovered how policy towards Rwanda had been made by a secretive network of military officers, politicians, diplomats, businessmen, and senior intelligence operatives. At its centre was Mitterrand. French policy had been unaccountable to either parliament or the press. This has made the discovery of the truth about France’s role in the genocide difficult. It may be that a true reckoning of France’s responsibility will never be possible.

Um, so, somewhere in those ellipses he explained why, but I still don’t get it.