Bisesero Massacre: Rights Groups mobilized to avoid denial of justice

Since 2005, the League of Human Rights (LDH), the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and Survie, alongside other associations, are involved in the judicial file concerning the Bisesero massacres in Rwanda where for three days, at the end of June 1994, hundreds of civilians were exterminated by the genocidaires, while the first French detachment was only a few kilometers away.

The complaint against X, filed in 2004 by six Tutsi survivors before the Paris Armed Forces Court, targets the French chain of command of Operation Turquoise, whose soldiers could have knowingly allowed to continue the killings in this largely controlled sector by the French army.

As Mediapart reveals today, the civil parties were informed on July 27 of the will of the judges of the “Crimes against humanity, crimes and war crimes” section of the Paris court (to which the file was sent in 2012), to close this instruction, without several crucial points having been clarified.

The refusal to interview certain key witnesses (including senior officers), to request certain military documents or to confront the sometimes contradictory versions of the officers of the time, is incomprehensible for “ our associations, which have produced a considerable amount of investigation work on this file with their lawyers and the lawyers of the Rwandan civil parties; and who regularly fed the judges of notes and requests for deeds.” Reads a part of the Rights Groups statement.

Already last year, the FIDH, the LDH and Survie had alerted to the judicial treatment of this issue, revealing the taboo that always seems to surround the real objective of Operation Turquoise and the establishment of French responsibilities during the 1994 Genocide against Tutsis.

As rightly pointed out by Mediapart in its article, no indictment was pronounced in this case and many requests for acts of civil parties have not yet been followed by the judges.

Nevertheless, the elements of the procedure allow affirming that the staff of the Army knew about the massacres in course from the afternoon of June 27, 1994.

While the object of the Turquoise mission was to “put end of the massacres “, the file which includes more than 16 000 assessments, does not report any reaction of the military authorities to this discovery and no order to go to the hills of Bisesero to stop the killings.

It is necessary to recall here that the rescue of the Tutsis of Bisesero on June 30, 1994 does not follow a mission order, but is the fact of the initiative of some field soldiers alerted by journalists, FIDH said

The examining magistrates in charge of the case, who refused to interview the Chief of Staff and his deputy, intend to put an end to their investigation without seeking to know which authorities, military or civilian, have made the decision not to bring in French-based soldiers to stop the ongoing genocide in the Bisesero hills.

To avoid a miscarriage of justice, the FIDH, the LDH and Survie are currently working to mobilize all possible legal arguments and remedies to prevent a precipitous closure of the investigation of this issue emblematic of French involvement alongside Rwandan genocidaires.

The judicial inquiry must continue without the reason of State being able to obstruct it, concludes the statement