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Writer's pictureNicoletta Fagiolo

French trial embraces pro-Kagame apologists’ witch-hunting, betraying justice

Updated: Oct 21





A trial was held in Paris from the 7-11 of October 2024 against investigative journalist and historian Dr Charles Onana and his editor Damien Serieyx, accused of genocide denial concerning a book published in 2019 on the UN mandated French-led Operation Turquoise in Rwanda 1994. The complaining parties are five French-based NGOs : Ibuka-France, Survie, the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism(LICRA) and the collective of civil parties for Rwanda (CPCR).

 

A French law passed in January 2017 - an amendment introduced to article 24 bis of the law on freedom of the press - can today condemn anyone who questions the Tutsi genocide narrative when analyzing the Rwandan tragedy: denying, trivializing or contesting the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda is punishable by one year of imprisonment and a fine of up to 45,000 euros.


It was quite astonishing to witness that in the four trial days Onana’s lawyers presented 18 witnesses, both Rwandan and non-Rwandan,  which all spoke on their direct experience in Rwanda on the events under review, whereas the plaintiffs did not even present a single Rwandan witness, but only three young university students (of which only one has written on Rwandan history and nothing on the subject under review) who spent trial time exposing linguistic characterizations of genocide denial, a Belgian lawyer Bernard Maingain (who at trial based his entire testimony on hearsay evidence) and the journalist Jean-Francois Dupaquier.

 

This set-up seemed quite racist in itself, as not only did the plaintiffs not engage with any of the many historical details revealed by those who witnessed the events, but they seemed to feel entitled to uphold a dubious version of the history of a country, ignoring the plethora of archival sources available today and worse, ignoring what many Rwandans have to say.

 

Perhaps a more civilized way to affront the different narratives surrounding the Rwandan tragedy would have been to hold a debate where Onana could face Jean-Francois Dupaquier and historical events could be discussed. Not one side silencing the other with 15 lawyers paid by NGOs whose work should  rather focus on tackling human right abuses, rather than attacking a book written by a scholar.

 

The contrast of hearing simple citizens, diplomats, lawyers, human rights activists, UN personnel, French military officials, explaining the complexity of events they lived on the ground with the complaining parties’ witnesses’ who never addressed a single historical fact was quite dystopian  to watch. What was also interesting was that the Rwandan testimonies Dr Charles Onana presented at trial came from all walks of the country’s political affiliations, enriching an often one-sided presentation.

 

I have come to the opposite conclusion of what the French law underscores, and even Charles Onana who does not deny the Tutsi genocide. While working at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva my colleagues corrected me when I was buying books which explained the French involvement in the Rwandan genocide: they told me I did not really understand, those books were propaganda, but they were on the ground and saw what was happening: Rwanda 1990-94 was, according to them who spent years on the ground working in the refugee camps in Rwanda, Congo (then Zaire) and Tanzania, a US regime change and a Hutu genocide. Only years later would I understand the grave implications of their confessions.

 

Thus, perhaps what makes this trial nightmarish historically speaking  is that the very law introduced in 2017 acts as a straightjacket on the Rwandan tragedy, not allowing any research into the necessary nuances of all historical reconstruction. Worse, this straightjacket is contested by Rwandan youth today, many fleeing the country into exile due to death threats, simply for perceiving this caricatural reading of the Rwandan tragedy as unjust, causing an outright apartheid of victims.

 

I was astonished to learn from many Rwandans, both in the court room and outside, that they are not allowed back home to mourn their Hutu relatives, but only their Tutsi relatives, who succumbed in the dreadful massacres.

 

Few Rwandans were present in the tribunal as spectators: those present told me they are quite afraid as even to simply show up at this trial can be perceived by the Kagame regime as a stance against it, others told me they are unjustly persecuted as genocidaires for either not having accused the French as the Rwandan government had demanded from them, for having attempted to set up a political party in exile or simply for being critical of the current regime ; others wanted to testify on what they had witnessed yet told me that Paul Kagame will exterminate their family back home if they did so. I began to feel that something is deeply wrong. This community of Rwandans is demonized, forgotten and left to fend for themselves when facing draconian French and international law.


Having followed the Laurent Gbagbo trial for nine years I was also aware of the grave shortcoming of what some hail as a justice system, yet what played out at the International Criminal Court in the Gbagbo and CharlesBlé Goudé case was simply neocolonial lawfare. Thus I also thought the part of the new French law exposed at trial that sustains one is not allowed to question institutions, deeply unhealthy.

 

The world has failed Rwanda not only in 1994, but to this day.

 

What I perceived as an outsider watching this trial is a country, Rwanda today,  suffering and traumatized due to its incapacity to speak the truth on its own history, and the French judicial system which seemed to be aiding and abetting the enforcement of this absurd and dreadful silence.

 

Kagame uses this disingenuous 2017 French law to close the debate on the Rwandan events of 1990-94, as well as silence all contemporary dissidence. After genocidaire (Congolese geopolitical analyst Patrick Mbeko has documented the judicial harassment of Hutus world-wide in a recent book Rwanda: Malheur aux Vaincus 1994-2024) now also genocide denier becomes a perfect tool of repression, especially since France has decided under Emmanuel Macron to embrace such judicial harassment, most probably in exchange of economic gains in the African Great Lakes region. After all it is Rwandan soldiers protecting French petrol interests in Mozambique and Europe did sign a memorandum on strategic minerals with Rwanda in February this year, despite the numerous reports which reveal that most of these minerals are plundered in eastern Congo.

 

Worse Kagame uses this false history to occupy eastern Congo today where a genocide by mainly Rwandan but also Ugandan proxy militias is on-going since 1996: we are today well over 12 million civilians who have been assassinated and over 7 million displaced in the region. A LICRA member at trail tried to convince me during trial break that 100,000 people had been killed in eastern Congo, when reports in 2008 based on epidemiological  surveys already spoke of 5.6 million killed in nine years (  they excluded the first two years of the war from 1996-98 and the subsequent 16 years up to this day). It was appalling to listen to such outright genocide denial from members of the NGOs accusing a book of genocide denial.  

 

On the first trial day we heard from one of the plaintiffs’ witnesses Bojana Coulibaly  whose field of expertise is literature. She was the managing editor of EJO Editions, a publishing house specializing in Wolof literature and other Senegalese national languages founded by writer Boubacar Boris Diop. Coulibaly has published one book on the west African short story. One cannot help but wonder how someone who has not published anything on Rwandan history can be considered a qualified witness in a trial concerning a book on a specific humanitarian operation in contemporary Rwandan history. Also, because the book under trial was an extrapolation of a PhD achieved by Charles Onana at the University of Lyon in 2017. Yet we were told at trial that the focus was not history (although it is a history book) but language, the language of genocide denial. A large part of the presentation was on how the author Onana had placed the word genocide in  quotation marks in some parts of the book, the word appeared more often in quotation marks than without them.

 

I did a quick background check on the internet and found that African Language Program Manager at Harvard Bojana Coulibaly is an extreme Paul Kagame apologist,  shielding the totalitarian regime from all possible criticism to the point of ridicule. For example in an interview for Kirinapost Coulibaly calls the recent Forbidden Stories inquiry Rwanda Classified, Investigating Kagame’s Repressive Regime, a conspiracy and "a textbook case of European journalistic negrophobia." How absurd considering that one of the investigators who has participated in many of the eight investigations is a Rwandan journalist Samuel Baker Byansi, in exile due to his research into Rwandan involvement in eastern Congo.  

 

Coulibaly has probably not read  the 2016 book Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship by Anjan Sundaram, a harrowing account of the state of journalism in Rwanda. During a trial break I asked the Collective of civil parties for Rwanda (CPCR) lawyer Richard Gisagara, if he did not think it was too biased to present a witness that also calls main stream journalistic investigations  a conspiracy, to which he answered: “of course the Forbidden Stories inquiries are a conspiracy.”  




This may be due to Coulibaly's utter lack of knowledge on what she writes as she has only written a few academic articles on topics such as African short fiction or traditional wresting in west Africa.




But it gets worse: Coulibaly in a tweet outright denies the recent Human Rights Watch report on torture in Rwanda today by stating that these reports are not only  “invented” but and are pro-Onana stances of a French television (TV5Monde) that receives financing from the Congolese state. Rarely have I read such contorted and ludicrous affirmations, not worthy of a scholar.





Her pro-Kagame stance is astonishing:  in a 2022 article for The Great Lakes Eye For how much longer will Western media and intellectual community blind themselves with fallacious narratives about Rwanda? Coulibaly again comes to the rescue of Kagame’s totalitarian regime, and denies that the M23 militia is supported by Rwanda, thus denying countless UN Panel of Experts and other reports, testimonies on the ground and books written on the movement. She thus also denies the well-documented Congolese genocide perpetuated since almost three decades by Rwandan and Ugandan proxy militias. In this article she calls for the incarceration of Hotel Rwanda’s hero, Paul Rusesabagina recently freed. Rusesabagina story can be read in one ofthe Forbidden Stories investigations.




 

Coulibaly who has written only a few short articles on Rwanda also underscores in a 5 July 2024 article for Nairobi-based The EastleighVoice that Kagame’s most probable reelection with over 90% is actually an example of democracy.


In a July 2024 article Coulibaly interviews M23 spokesperson Lawrence Kanyuka, who claims the movement is peaceful, yet underlines that it is fighting against government forces.



A further article dating 30 July 2024 for a website ConspiracyTracker Great Lakes Coulibaly aggressively attacks Congo pundit Jason Stearns (whose writing on the Congolese crisis is often misleading to say the least) for his call to sanction Rwanda. She instead proposes that Congolese President Thisekedi, whose country is enduring an international aggression, should be the one sanctioned. She also calls for disciplinary actions within academia against Jason Stearns.




When I saw Coulibaly laughing at trial and shaking her head when Charles Onana spoke of the death threats he had received from the Kagame regime (Onana filed a complaint in France in October 2024 against Paul Kagame for the death threats recieved) , and I just wanted to tell her that I did have a copy of Victore Ingabire’s lawyers press release which metioned these threats, she called the police at trial to get me to sit elsewhere. When at the end of the trial I tried to speak to a Rwandan from the plaintiffs  group to again mention the lawyer’s press release, although I was not speaking to her, again Coulibaly called the police, although I was conversing peacefully, and asked that I be asked to leave, although the trial had ended. I was embarrassed for her.

 

I also asked her during a trial break why she wrote that Forbidden Stories was a conspiracy, which she denied, saying that was not what she had written and ended the conversation.

 

I guess one becomes what one works for…


Fiction would most probably have been a better career option for Coulibaly.


Part one...to be continued ...

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