French President Emmanuel Macron and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame on Tuesday inaugurated a memorial in Paris to honour the victims of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda.
Macron said the memorial placed the genocide of the Tutsis “at the heart of our capital and our history”, and that it was “the culmination of a long and painstaking quest for the truth”.
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In May 2021, during a visit to Rwanda, Macron recognised his country’s responsibility in the Rwandan genocide and said he hoped for forgiveness, seeking to reset relations after years of Rwandan accusations that France was complicit in the 1994 slaughter of an estimated 800,000 people — mostly ethnic Tutsis. However, he stopped short of issuing a formal apology.
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This was after a commission established by Macron concluded in March 2021 that France had been blinded by its colonial attitude to events leading up to the genocide and bore a “serious and overwhelming” responsibility for failing to foresee the slaughter.
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The memorial on the banks of the Seine river in the heart of Paris is named “L’Archive”. It was designed by Portuguese artist Grada Kilomba. It consists of two black steles and bears an engraved tribute to the hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children massacred between April and July 1994.
