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| NOCOLAS SARKOZY: A PRESIDENT WHO BETRAYED HIS COUNTRY Jacques Hogard, French military who lived within Rwandan genocide, protests against the accusations against France by Paul Kagame. According to him, the Rwandan president wanted the killings to better establish his dictatorship. |
Published earlier in French by:LE FIGARO
Colonel Jacques Hogard was commander of the group Foreign Legion during Operation Turquoise in Rwanda in 1994. As such, he is a founding member of the France-Turquoise association, whose main purpose is to "restore the truth about the actions of the French army and French soldiers in Rwanda "in response to these allegations during the genocide in Rwanda.
Colonel Jacques Hogard was commander of the group Foreign Legion during Operation Turquoise in Rwanda in 1994. As such, he is a founding member of the France-Turquoise association, whose main purpose is to "restore the truth about the actions of the French army and French soldiers in Rwanda "in response to these allegations during the genocide in Rwanda.
April 6, 1994 at nightfall, the plane carrying Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira respectively Hutu presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, returning from a regional summit that had just been held in Arusha, Tanzania, was shot down by a missile sol-air as he had to land in Kigali, the Rwandan capital.
Three hours later, in the north east of Rwanda , columns weapons RPF , the Tutsi rebellion, began running for the last stage of their military conquest of the country. At their head, a formidable strategist and military leader, Paul Kagame , a Tutsi from Rwanda to Uganda and emigration aristocratic Colonel information from the Ugandan army, trained in American schools.
In Kigali , at the same time, the RPF battalion stationed in the former Rwandan parliament under the Arusha Accords in October 1993, also immediately put in motion in the capital.
The next day, debuted massacres of unspeakable horror that would bloody the land of a thousand hills for a hundred days, Hutu people killing their Tutsi compatriots tirelessly in abominable conditions.
The genocide of Tutsis began and with it the misfortune of this small country in the Great Lakes, after twenty lives under a totalitarian regime where democracy and basic freedoms are a dream for the moment unavailable.
This genocide will not remain alone. To 800,000 Tutsi victims in 1994, successor alas between 1995 and 1997 some 400,000 Hutu victims, persecuted and decimated in the eastern forests of the currentDRC , not to mention hundreds of thousands of Congolese of all ethnic groups, also killed in fighting and killings that still endure today.
There are some days on the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the genocide, President Kagame in a violent speech attacked again to France he accused persistently came from years of complicity in genocide, when he said not simply that it is almost solely responsible!
To the intolerable nature of such charges set out in spite of the facts and history, yesterday April 6, France has renounced delegate a minister of his government official ceremonies in Kigali.
In retaliation, President Kagame has decided to prohibit our ambassador to Rwanda to attend these ceremonies which however was now a French former minister in the person of the controversial Bernard Kouchner , longtime friend of the Rwandan potentate.
How to explain such a deadlock between France and Rwanda today?
Certainly there is history. The contemporary history started from the establishment of military cooperation between Rwanda and France at the beginning of the seven of Valery Giscard d'Estaing as Juvenal Habyarimana was for some years in power in Rwanda.
This is indeed the name of the agreements that the same President Habyarimana in October 1990 decided to appeal to France to counter the armed uniformed and Uganda with Ugandan military equipment entering the north elements. This is the time of the operation which consists Noroit with two or three companies of infantry to protect our citizens and ensure the stability of the capital. This is also the time when the French military cooperation will ensure the upgrading of the FAR (Rwandan Armed Forces) against the RPF.
This one suspects, hardly attracts us the favor of Tutsi guerrilla!
But support of France President Habyarimana not done without consideration. We are a few months after the Speech from La Baule and the counterparty required and obtained by France, is the democratization of the regime, the abandonment of the single, the adoption of a multiparty system and the opening of dialogue with both the domestic opposition with the armed rebellion of the RPF.
At that point Habyarimana and must enter into a period of cohabitation where his position becomes difficult.
The Arusha Accords signed in October 1993 spent this evolution while officially ending the military support of France therefore withdraw all its military units Rwanda, giving way to a UN force, theUNAMIR controlled by the Canadian General Romeo Dallaire.
It is this force of over 2,000 men who, by decision of the UN, will be reduced to 9/10th of its workforce, only ten days after the genocide began in early April 1994!
It is this strength, and behind it, the UN, but more the international community who attend without interfering, as helpless, conduct genocide 800,000 Tutsis in disaster spring of 1994.
However, it is France that by the mouth of his Minister of Foreign Affairs Alain Juppé, was the first to call genocide by its name, and ask to denounce sending an international force to put an end to the massacres.
But the United States in particular, by the mouth of Madeleine Albright, oppose their weight.
It will have to wait for the end of June to force pressure, the UN vote resolution authorizing France to conduct a limited two months Rwanda operation to put an end to genocide.
It's Operation Turquoise (22 juin/22 August 1994) in which less than 2000 men will seek to restore order and security for all in the south-west of Rwanda, while collapsing the radical Hutu regime that successor to President Habyarimana and his opposition government. This is done in a context of great tension heightened by the rout of the interim government and administration and the disintegration of FAR subjected for months to a strict embargo on arms and ammunition. Opposite then deploys military force of a heavily armed RPF and supported by Uganda at least. In a few weeks the country was conquered, with the exception of the safe humanitarian zone (HSZ) made by France with the approval of the UN in the southwest of the country.
At the time it should be remembered that Kagame, for weeks, threatening France of his wrath if she notifies
to intervene in Rwanda and thus disrupt the conquest of territory.
In July 1994, it already knows, moreover, the totalitarian nature of the RPF and its practices and so it is with a very military posture, and provided with means for meaningful fights that Turquoise Force moved to Rwanda .
The fury of Kagame who has never carried in his heart the France and the French is great.
After a few skirmishes, the Tutsi general, however, give up, despite his bluster, to face the French troops. Which will be able to do their job and then save a few thousand Tutsis still hidden in the Rwandan countryside.
End of August 1994 Turquoise passes control to African, Ethiopian units including UNAMIR II.
The French finally leave Rwanda after two months of intense mandate they have not worked so hard to pacify a region as large as a French department, and convince them to stay there for hundreds of thousands of Hutus tempted by the exile in neighboring countries, Burundi and Zaire.
Therefore, the propaganda unleashed against Kagame French forces accused of genocidal protected, have encouraged Hutu militias and why not they even have participated in massacres!
The surprise is so great for the soldier that I am great because I am back in France from the mine after a transaction to which I am particularly proud to have participated, believing indeed have done my best as well as each of my men, my peers and my superiors, to bring some order, stability and peace in this country devastated by hatred and barbarism.
But my surprise is even greater than I also discover French and European lobbies, with strong media and financial resources, which then turns shamelessly, for whose interests?, The vile accusations against France and his army uttered from Kigali winner by the RPF in Rwanda.
In twenty years, many things have settled.
And people of good faith can now ignore the grim reality of the RPF to power in Rwanda since 1994, disappearances, murders, imprisonment, summary judgments, executions, torture, humiliation, moral and psychological constraints, reeducation camps and self-criticism ... etc..
How not to mention for example the names of the heroic Umuhoza Victoire Ingabire, the "Rwandan Aung San Suu Kyi," Democratic opponent Kagame and as such ordered after torture of all kinds to life imprisonment, and that of Theodore Munyangabe , sub-prefect, "Righteous Among the Righteous" Hutu savior of Tutsis at the risk of his life, also sentenced to life in prison for the sole crime of being my friend and collaborator most committed and courageous in Cyangugu during Summer 1994?
Kagame caused the 1994 genocide. He wished, as large-scale massacres of Tutsis inside, were his only way to escape democracy that would have definitely left a second role, the only way to resume the armed struggle and legitimize it, the only way to take control of Rwanda and to establish his regime with an iron fist for decades.
Released today clearly by his American allies, certainly because of its warlike escapades too visible in the DRC and its too obvious contempt for democratic values, the instrumentalization of genocide is now the only and last card he has left for maintain power.
That's why we had this sudden incident with France.
It is not me who says but his brothers Tutsi weapons disappointed former RPF who fled Rwanda when they found the totalitarian drift, General Kayumba Niamwasa Dr. Théogène Rudasingwa, Attorney Gerald Gahima Major Jean-Marie Micombero; these brave Tutsis pursued by the hatred of Kagame anywhere in the world and it sometimes to sacrifice their lives as Colonel Patrice Karegeya murdered on January 1 in South Africa.
These are the same high Tutsi dignitaries in exile formally accuse Kagame with luxury details and evidence of the assassination of his predecessor programmed.
These are the same high Tutsi dignitaries in exile formally accuse Kagame have cynically built his strategy of conquest of power in the blood of his countrymen.
These are the same high Tutsi dignitaries who predicting him as all dictators in history, a terrible end and next.
So before all this, it remains to Kagame that the headlong rush, the outrageous accusations, the methods less democratic ...
His statements as violent as false, reiterated last week on the eve of the commemoration of the 1994 genocide, had intended only to avoid at all costs any contact with France is that it can be dangerous in the long term for a potentate too frequent and too democracies get used capillary values of the Spirit!
Colonel (ret.) Jacques Hogard
Former commander of the South Group of Operation Turquoise
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