The End of a French Denial?: The "Duclert Report" and the Official Recognition of France's Misdoings in Rwanda, Before and During the Genocide of Rwandan Tutsis (1990-1994)

Abstract:Between March 26, 2021 (the date the Duclert Report was handed over to President Macron), and May 27 (the date of the latter's speech in front of the Gisozi memorial in Kigali), the wall of French denial about French responsibilities in the genocide of Rwandan Tutsis fell. Only two months were enough to separate a "before" from an "after," a before of more than twenty-five years during which the questioning of French policy in Rwanda between 1990 and 1994 was met with denials by the majority of political and military actors of the time, and sometimes by a large part of the media. By finally making official a discourse of truth, the Duclert Report opened a decisive breach; by taking it up in Kigali, the President of the Republic institutionalized it, somewhat as Jacques Chirac had done in July 1995 in his famous Vel d'Hiv speech on the role of Vichy in the deportation and extermination of French Jews.