FRANCE-POLITICS: African Relations Highlighted in Presidential Race

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Angeline Oyog

PARIS, Dec 9 1994 (IPS) - Harping on French complicity in the genocide in Rwanda, human rights and development organisations are grilling the candidates to the 1995 Presidential elections in France on their intentions to reform French-African relations.

Starting with the French role in the Rwandan crisis, a coalition of 12 NGOs is highlighting the most scandalous excesses that they say have characterised French-African relations for the past 30 years and pressing the different candidates to the May vote to answer precise questions on each of the scandals.

They also promise to publicise their answers, or absence of them on the eve of the two-round elections in order to give voters an idea of the plans of the candidate they are electing to the Elysee.

“We do not want anymore a policy towards Africa that escapes all democratic control and which is oriented towards short-term and economic and political interests,” said the non-governmental organisation (NGOs) in a joint statement.

According to Jose Kagabo, sociologist at the African Centre Studies in Paris, France has always had a “pathological attitude” towards Africa which recent events show has degenerated. It must now change, he stressed.

The interrogation of Presidential candidates follows the mock trial of French-African relations conducted by the same coalition of NGOs in Biarritz in south-western France last November at the same time that French and African heads-of-states were holding their 18th summit.

The Rwandan crisis, sparked by the death of Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana in a plane crash last April, saw hundreds of thousands of people killed in ethnic violence between the Hutus and the Tutsis.

Africa watchers say France should bear much of the blame for the crisis having sold a lot of arms to the Hutu-dominated army, and also have provided military training and technical assistance to the Rwandese government forces during a previous rebellion by the Tutsi-backed Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in 1990.

Various testimonies have also indicated that French soldiers continue their training of the defeated Rwandan soldiers currently in refugee camps, for an imminent attempt to reconquer the country.

FRANCE-POLITICS: African Relations Highlighted in Presidential Race

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Angeline Oyog

PARIS, Dec 9 1994 (IPS) - Harping on French complicity in the genocide in Rwanda, human rights and development organisations are grilling the candidates to the 1995 Presidential elections in France on their intentions to reform French-African relations.
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