Posted on 11/24/2006 3:04:15 PM PST by MadIvan
Decades of hostility between France and Rwanda burst into the open yesterday when the tiny Central African state recalled its ambassador and broke off diplomatic relations with Paris.
Charles Murigande, the Rwandan Foreign Affairs Minister, said: “We have ordered the French Ambassador to leave our country within 24 hours and given other French diplomats 72 hours to leave the country,” he said. Rwanda made its move after a French anti-terrorist judge issued arrest warrants against nine leading Rwandans for killing a former President, the event that sparked the 1994 genocide.
Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, who brought the terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, Carlos the Jackal, to justice, also said that President Kagame should face trial for the shooting-down on April 6, 1994, of a French plane carrying Juvénal Habyarimana, the former President, and a crew of seven French nationals.
Rwanda, which maintains that France was complicit in the massacre of some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus through its support of Habyarimana’s hardline Hutu Government, reacted with fury to the allegations. More than 25,000 people attended demonstrations in the capital, Kigali, yesterday. Many carried placards reading: “The hell with French imperialism” and “They killed our people”.
President Kagame dismissed the judge’s call as “rubbish” and said that the trial should be directed at France, which he accuses of never having come clean about its role in history’s fastest mass slaughter.
“That some judge in France whose name I cannot even pronounce has something to say about Rwanda — trying a president and some government officials — that’s rubbish,” he told diplomats. “That is justice of bullies, arrogance . . . France cannot try anyone. Try who? Over what? They should first try themselves because they killed our people.”
Mr Kagame, who headed the former Rwandan Patriotic Front, which halted the genocide, has always denied that his fighters shot down the French jet to scupper plans for multiparty elections that the Tutsis — who represent only 15 per cent of the population — could never have won. The President, who went into exile in English-speaking Uganda at the age of 2, has a deep-seated resentment towards what he considers to be malign French influence in Central Africa.
Senior Tutsi politicians say that France helped to repel incursions by Tutsi exiles throughout the 1970s and 80s while doing nothing to make the Hutu governments accept power-sharing deals. They claim that it also played a part in reducing the UN peacekeeping force after the genocide began and, along with the United States, blocking Security Council action to end it. Paris angrily rejects such suggestions.
Violent History
1962 Rwanda gains independence. Hutu majority gains political control. Tutsis flee violence
1990 Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invades from bases in neighbouring Uganda
1993 Hutu President Habyarimana signs power-sharing agreement with Tutsis; UN mission sent to monitor peace
1994 Habyarimana killed when his plane is shot down; Hutu militias kill 800,000 Tutsis; major RPF offensive forces a ceasefire
2003 RPF under Paul Kagame wins first multiparty elections
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
Thats not a bet . How about some odds? Like 500 to 1
France is often hostile to just about everybody else in the world including themselves.
I bet the French ambassador is really upset to have to leave that African cesspool on short notice!
I bet the French ambassador is really upset to have to leave that African cesspool on short notice!
Perhaps the liberals would take notice if more had been killed by handguns or if more of the victims had been white liberals instead of black Africans.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
"“We have ordered the French Ambassador to leave our country within 24 hours..."
What heinous crime did he commit to be sentenced to that job?
He committed Liberalism
LOLOL!
Then......OFF WITH HIS HEAD!
Thank you for the laugh. ;o)
And, a hearty Welcome to Free Republic!
What is going on is not just a matter of being upset or what, the ambassador represents the France and he better goes home safe. nevertheless, I am concerned by our people who can only express themselves in the Voltaire's Language.
I hope we will still be united even though they use the enemies language.
cheers.
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