Macron to say France and allies could have stopped Rwanda genocide in 1994
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has said France and its western and African allies “could have stopped” Rwanda’s 1994 genocide but did not have the will to halt the slaughter of an estimated 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis.
In a video message to be published on Sunday to mark the 30th anniversary of the genocide, Macron will emphasise that “when the phase of total extermination against the Tutsis began, the international community had the means to know and act”, the presidency said on Thursday.
The president believes that at the time the international community already had historical experience of witnessing genocide with the Holocaust in the second world war and the mass killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey during the first world war.
