Four self-proclaimed academics on the geopolitics of the African Great Lakes region, Bojana Coulibaly, Yoan Gwilman De Souza, Jessica Mwiza and Romain Poncet (all four have actually not written anything substantive in this academic field) wrote an article A trial against hate for Le Point newspaper on the trial which took place 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).
Bojana Coulibaly, Yoan Gwilman De Souza, Jessica Mwiza and Romain Poncet write in the Le Point article on the first testimony of the trial Luc Marchal, former Commander of the UN peacekeeping mission United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) Kigali Sector: “Former Colonel Luc Marchal, responsible for the Kigali sector of UNAMIR between December 93 and April 94, presented himself as an expert on the country due to his years of service in Zaire in the 1970s, before attributing full responsibility for the genocide to the RPF. This veteran of the Kolwezi military operation concluded his time at the bar to the applause of part of the room, where scarves in the colors of the DRC were worn.”
Marchal's testimony on 7 October 2024 did not attribute full responsibility to the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) for the genocide, he rather explained in detail under oath what he witnessed.
However, if this is the conclusion reached by the article’s authors, amongst which a trial witness Bojana Coulibaly, maybe such grave conclusions drawn form a high-level UN personnel testimony with on-ground experience on the key moments in the country’s recent history, should call for a serious rewriting of the caricatural and racist version which today dominantes recent Rwandan history.
The testimony was far richer than the two flimsy sentences above, yet probably uncomfortable for people touting a truncated historical narrative. Let’s take a look at what he really said:
Luc Marchal began by explaining his background and how he ended up in Rwanda: “ I first lived for 5 years in Zaire (then Congo A/N) as a military development worker. In 1977 I witnessed the 80-day war in Katanga and in 1978 the second invasion, under the Belgian flag, of Kolwezi. In 1990 my function was that of advisor to the Belgian Minister of Defense. In October 1990 I witnessed the first Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) attacks. These were the first incursions of the RPF which lasted until December 1990. In May 1993, I submitted my application to become commander of the Kigali sector for UNAMIR. My wish was to put my military knowledge to the benefit of this crisis. And being Belgian, I was also aware of the Rwandan problem between Hutus, the Tutsis and the Twas. I wanted to use the art of consultation in the service of peace, as I had direct access to high-level authorities such as the RPF, the government and UNAMIR. I always maintained a strong neutral stance.”
RPF non-respect of the arms embargo
Marchal then continued his testimony by explaining the military context he faced while serving in Rwanda: “at the beginning of 1993, the military context boiled down to one mission: to ensure the strict application of the Arusha agreement protocol signed on 24 December 1993 by Paul Kagame and Augustin Bizimana, on the possession and carrying of weapons by both parties. The Arusha agreement charted a plan for the sharing of power between the mainly Hutu government and the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front to end the war which had been on-going for three years.”
Marchal underscored under oath at court that the Rwandan Habyarimana government complied with the agreement, yet this was not the case for Paul Kagame and the RPF. Marshal also noticed that the RPF held violent attitudes against the Tutsis from the interior. (The RPF was a Ugandan born movement made up of Tutsis in exile since the country’s Social Revolution in 1959 A/N )
Marchal said: “The role of UNAMIR commander General Dallaire, author of I shook hands with the Devil, was above all to cool off the RPF, since their aggressive stance was provoking violence against the Tutsis living in Rwanda. When General Dallaire tried to make Paul Kagame understand that his attitude is harmful for the Tutsis, the latter said : “you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.” In short, what happened to the Tutsis inside Rwanda did not matter to the RPF as long as they managed to achieve their goal of gaining power via a regime change. For Paul Kagame, the Tutsis of the interior had made the choice to staying behind in 1959 instead of leaving Rwanda. They should instead according to the RPF have fled into exile, and later joined the RPF.”
The RPF’s empty chair policy
Marchal argues that if the RPF had really wanted to participate in the democratic game, it would have occupied its appropriate place in the political arena. Marchal went on underscoring that the RPF was not seeking a peaceful means out of the war, and this was revealed by their policy of the empty chair when it came to setting up new institutions following the establishment of a multiparty system.
In his words: “On 5 January 1994 President Habyarimana took an oath, yet the national assembly or transitional government was not able to form. The efforts for this implementation were respected by everyone except the RPF who boycotted it. In fact, the agreement had been finalized but the RPF refused to apply it. The setting up of these institutions was thus prevented.
Despite the embargo imposed on both the Rwandan government and the RPF, the latter will constitute in the border zone a whole arsenal, an armament build-up to subsequently carry out a major military offensive. I was an observer, what is special about a military observer? My quality as an observer requires me to work during the day, never at night. But what did we notice? During the day, everything was calm but, in the evening, at night, the observers heard sounds of vehicles driving near the border in Uganda. All this is contrary to the initiatives taken during the signing of the Arusha agreements. Why did these hostilities resume? On 7 April 1994 at 4:30 p.m., several battles took place, where the RPF was the first to launch these attacks. After the attack which killed President Habyarimana, the city was calm. The Hutus did not attack. By acting in this way, no RPF battalion cared about the fate of the Tutsis living in Rwanda.
The RPF’s constant refusal to accept a ceasefire proposed by UNAMIR and the Rwandan government and watching them attack in this way, indicates that the RPF, no battalion of the RPF, had a desire to put an end to the massacres.
The RPF willingly sacrificed the Tutsi’s of the interior
Marchal continues: “If the fate of the Tutsis living in Rwanda had been important for the RPF it would never have acted in this way. We could have stopped the war if the RPF had agreed to implement the peace agreement. The resumption of the war began immediately after the assassination of the two Presidents. And what I noticed on the ground was that the RPF had already prepared for war. The military arsenal was ready. The war effort had been prepared for three years.
Marchal moves on addressing the book which is at the center of this trial, for which he wrote the preface: “Now, regarding the book, my personal experience is that I was part of the jury of the doctoral thesis of Charles Onana. I read the book. The quality of this academic performance was unanimously recognized and highlighted by the members of the jury. This book is a condensed version of the PhD thesis. I express all my consideration for the work carried out by Charles Onana for over 20 years to do justice to all the victims of the Great Lakes region, also those in the Congo. There was a time, I experienced this period of destabilization, where anything was said. The purpose of the numerous misleading statements at the time were either to destabilize UNAMIR or to force it to take sides. There was abundant false information circulating, a clear strategy of destabilization targeting President Habyarimana. Théoneste Bagosora was accused of planning the genocide, but the truth is that at the time Bagosora and the interim government begged UNAMIR to put in place a peace process. While entering Kigali city with my driver the day the plane was shot down, I did not meet any military element which could have suggested any planning. Théoneste Bagosora was given the role of organizer. But the truth is that at the time of the plane attack he was visiting the UNAMIR Bangladesh battalion which had just arrived in the city.
In his remarks, Colonel Luc Marchal often spoke of the the RPF attitide and seeming disconcern for the Tutsis living in Rwanda. For Colonel Luc Marchal it is obvious that Kagame's goal was not to save Tutsis : " Paul Kagame refused to save Tutsis. The RPF members were divided into three stances: a soft, medium and extremist one. For the latter, the Tutsis from the interior were considered collaborators. They had no value. It would have been sufficient to create protected areas where the Tutsis could take refuge, but the RPF wanted to take power and thus refused to do so. Above all, according to the RPF it was not necessary that foreign troops intervene in the north. When the UN wanted to intervene, Kagame argued that this was useless because there were no more Tutsis to save."
Luc Marchal affirms that they had to reorganize" UNAMIR to prevent the airfield in Kigali to fall into the hands of the RPF.
Marchal : "The RPF took no significant actions in order to save Tutsis. The RPF was waging a war. And the goal of this war was to take power. After the second RPF attack, the hills of Kigali (tinged with blue and white tents of the internal refugees which had been chased from their homes by the RPF) where one eight of the population, one million people lived, constituted a real time bomb."
The RPF’s ultimate goal: regime change
On the 6 of April 1994 Rwanda suffered a double decapitation: it lost its President as well as the head of the army (Major General Déogratias Nsabimana, chief of staff of the Rwandan army was also killed in the attack, Ed). It was precisely at this moment that the RPF chose to launch a major military offensive from its positions in the north of the country. This offensive was totally inconsistent with the Arusha peace accords, and will end three months later with a total take-over, devoid of any power sharing. The RPF justified this unilateral decision by stating it needed to put an end to the massacres of Tutsis.
Marchal underscored at trial on the RPF justification: "An unlikely pretext since its troops had already started their offensive in the north of the country and this, in the absence of any aggression towards Tutsis. The diabolical machine was set in motion. All requests for a ceasefire formulated by UNAMIR or the FAR (Rwandan national army A/N), in order to put an end to the killings which were multiplying in the capital, and to stop a genocide in the making, went unheeded. It was as if the RPF feared being forced to put an end to its plans to come to power by force of arms."
Marchal goes on: "On 7 April it was the RPF which committed the first mass massacre in Kigali. Kagame’s army massacred Hutus soon after the assassination of Hutu President Habyarimana. Among those massacred, there were mainly liberal professions, doctors, lawyers, teachers. All these people had nothing to do with the military. The RPF used lists of names for the people they targetted. After these assassination automatic reactions were triggered.” The Colonel added : “one had to kill so as to avoid being killed.
Paul Kagame's favorite targets are writers and journalists. He absolutely wants to silence their voices. He wants anyone who has something to say contrary to his version to shut up. And among these people, there is Charles Onana. We also saw the death of Seth Sendashonga and many others.”
Marchal also quoted UN special representative of the Secretary General for Rwanda and head of UNAMIR Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh, who wrote that the RPF was adamantly against peace.
He concluded: “On the night of 6 to 7 of April, the Rwandan National Army, the FAR soldiers, returned to their barracks, we moved around Kigali without seeing any soldiers or organized patrols. The RPF attacked just after the plane attack and this proves that it had been ready for months. After 6 April there is complete chaos, looting, stealing and the gendarmes were busy trying to restore order. The first massacres were the hundreds killed on 7 April by the RPF with lists: liberal professions, doctors, teachers, lawyers. At the beginning of April, the RPF reportedly refused any intervention by UNAMIR and all requests for a ceasefire from the Rwandan army and government intended to put an end to the massacres. The RPF only wanted war and its goal was not saving Tutsi."
The Belgian officer concludes that the RPF troops did not come to the aid of their “Tutsi brothers but seemd to be set to persue their goal of regime change and taking over power by force .”
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