Monday, January 12, 2015

This is Rwanda................Belgium as well.............as one of the cities in Belgium is one of the top diamond trading cities on Earth..............they are also big into chocolate.........hence the importance of the Congo and Brazil.............................and remember that it was King Leapold of Belgium that convinced the Kaiser of Germany to let him buy the entire Congo region without even going there in the late 1800s.............




During the first few days of the genocide, France launched Amaryllis, a military operation involving 190 paratroopers, assisted by the Belgian army and UNAMIR, to evacuate foreign expatriates from Rwanda.[205] The operation was later described by Gerard Prunier as a "disgrace," as the French and Belgians refused to allow any Tutsi to accompany them; those who boarded the evacuation trucks were forced off at Rwandan government checkpoints, where they were killed.[206] The French also separated several expatriates and children from their Tutsi spouses, rescuing the foreigners but leaving the Rwandans to likely death.[206] The French did, however, rescue several high profile members of Habyarimana's government, as well as his wife, Agathe;[206] in some instances, French troops used UNAMIR vehicles, without the permission of General Dallaire.[207] The French abandoned their embassy in Kigali, in the process shredding hundreds of documents containing details of their relationship with the old regime.[208]
In late June 1994, France launched Opération Turquoise, a United Nations mandated mission to create safe humanitarian areas for protection of displaced personsrefugees, and civilians in danger; from bases in the Zairian cities of Goma and Bukavu, the French entered southwestern Rwanda and established the zone Turquoise, within the Cyangugu-Kibuye-Gikongoro triangle, an area occupying approximately a fifth of Rwanda.[209] Radio France International estimates that Turquoise saved around 15,000 lives,[210] but the timing of the invasion, with the genocide coming to an end and the RPF's ascendancy, led many Rwandans to interpret Turquoise primarily as a mission to protect Hutu from the RPF, including some who had participated in the genocide.[211] The French remained hostile to the RPF, and their presence temporarily stalled the RPF's advance in southwestern Rwanda.[212]
A number of inquiries have been held into French involvement in Rwanda. In 1998, following pressure from French magazine Le Figaro,[213] and the former president of the organisation Survie, the French government launched the French Parliamentary Commission on Rwanda.[213] The commission's report accused France of errors of judgement, including the development of "military cooperation against a background of ethnic tensions, massacres and violence,"[214] but it concluded that France did not bear direct responsibility for the genocide itself.[214] In 2006, following a report by a French judge accusing the RPF of killing President Habyarimana, and the severing of relations between Rwanda and France,[215] Rwanda launched its own inquiry into French involvement in the genocide.[216] This report, released in 2008, accused the French government of knowing of preparations for the genocide and helping to train the ethnic Hutu militia members; it accused 33 senior French military and political officials of involvement in the genocide, including then-President Francois Mitterrand, his Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, and Foreign Minister Alain Juppé.[217][218][219] Relations between the countries were restored in late 2009,[220] but as of 2014, President Kagame continues to accuse France of a "direct role in the preparation of the genocide."[210]

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