France is going to build memorial of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi
France is to erect a memorial to the victims of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the country announced Friday, as Kigali observes the 29th anniversary of the massacre.
The announcement comes after President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged in 2021 that his country was responsible for the deaths of over one million Rwandan Tutsi between April and July 1994.
According to the French presidency, the monument will be erected on the Left Bank of the Seine, near the Foreign Ministry.
As RFI said It will be across the water from another memorial to the victims of the mass killings of Armenians during World War I, which Yerevan and several Western states see as genocide.
The idea is “for the nation to pay its visible and permanent respects to the memory of the victims,” the presidency said, adding that a call for tenders would be launched at the end of May.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame and First Lady Jeannette Kagame after laying a wreath during the 29th commemoration ceremony for the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi at Gisozi Genocide Memorial in Kigali on April 7, 2023. PHOTO | MARIAM KONE | AFP
Marcel Kabanda, president of the Ibuka France genocide survivor association, welcomed the announcement as “very important”.
“It’s the sign that France… recognises its history,” he said.
“It’s a gesture to appease memories between France and Rwanda, and to appease the hearts of survivors of the genocide.”
Kigali for decades accused Paris, which had close ties to the ethnic Hutu regime in power at the time, of complicity in the mass killings.
After years of tensions, a commission of historians appointed by Macron in 2021 returned a damning indictment of France’s role in the bloodshed.
It said France had been “blind” to preparations for the genocide and bore “serious and overwhelming” responsibility, findings the French government accepted.
The commission found no proof, however, of French complicity in the bloodshed.
The new memorial, according to historian Vincent Duclert, would underline France’s “responsibility” and enable for “recognition of the tremendous significance of the 1994 tragedy.”