"French soldiers were themselves directly involved in the assassinations of Tutsis and Hutus accused of hiding Tutsis," and "French soldiers committed many rapes, specifically of Tutsi women". These are just some of the startling revelations of the Rwandan Mucyo Commission pointing to French complicity during Rwanda's 1994 genocide in which approximately 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus perished over 100 days. The 500-page report is quite explicit in its charges against Paris:

That France knew that a genocide was being planned;
The primary role of France in the preparation of the genocide, including training the Interahamwe (the militias that carried out the killings) in the five military barracks where the French army were residing;
France's role in the execution of the genocide, including the diplomatic and military support to the interim government which was committing the genocide; and that
French military intervention in the form of Operation Turquoise, far from creating a "humanitarian safe zone", led to further massacres.

The report concludes strongly, arguing that, "Considering the gravity of the alleged fact, the Rwandan Government enjoins competent authorities to undertake all necessary actions in order to bring the French and military accused leaders to answer for their acts before justice". Altogether 33 senior French political and military leaders are accused of complicity in genocide, including former President Francois Mitterrand and former Prime Minister Dominique De Villepin. Despite media speculation that Rwanda intended to indict the members of the French military and political establishment, Rwandan Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama did state that his government did not intend to issue indictments in the immediate future. This, in turn raises the question that if Kigali does not intend to pursue indictment against these French officials, why the need for the Commission in the first place?

This question is all the more pressing if one considers that whilst a French parliamentary committee examining the French role in the Rwandan genocide did clear France of any responsibility in the massacre, it noted that successive French governments had provided diplomatic and military support to the Rwandan government between 1990 and 1994. Even more important, an internationally recognized team of historians, political scientists and lawyers were brought together under the auspices of Human Rights Watch and the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues to conduct research and analysis of the Rwandan genocide. After four years of exhaustive research, this team released a comprehensive 800-page report in 1999. It established that U.S., French, and Belgian authorities, as well as those at the United Nations,received dozens of warnings in the months before the genocide but failed to act effectively. Worse, foreign leaders reacted timidly and tardily once the killing began. This report went on to state, "The Americans were interested in saving money, the Belgians were interested in saving face, and the French were interested in saving their ally. All of that took priority over saving lives". This, again, raises the question if so many international actors were to be blamed, why single out the French? In rejecting the findings of the Mucyo Commission's report, Paris noted that the Rwandan inquiry had no "independence or impartiality" because its stated remit was to "gather evidence of the involvement of the French state" in the Rwandan genocide. Again, the question needs to be posed as to why Paris is being singled out?
In order to answer this question we need to go back to November, 2006 when French anti-terrorism judge, Jean-Louis Brugiere concluded his investigation on who was responsible for the downing of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana's airplane on 6 April 1994, which served as a catalyst for the genocide. Judge Brugiere was investigating the case because the crew on the downed plane was French. Brugiere concluded that Rwandan President Paul Kagame gave the final order for the attack on the airplane. Whilst Paris did not issue a warrant for Kagame, as France grants immunity to heads of state, arrest warrants were issued for nine high ranking Rwandan officials. These included warrants for Rwandan armed forces chief James Kabarebe and Army Chief of Staff Charles Kayonga as well as Franck Nziza believed to be a captain in the Presidential Guard and Eric Hakizimana of the Secret Service. All these individuals are believed to be very close to Kagame. In response to these arrest warrants being issued, Rwanda immediately severed diplomatic ties with France and Kagame himself furiously denounced Judge Brugiere as "an imposter, a politician". The Mucyo Commission was established shortly after this incident in what some regard as a "tit-for-tat" against the French. The aim behind the Mucyo Commission was always political rather than to achieve justice for the victims of the genocide. In July, 2008, President Kagame threatened to indict French nationals over the genocide if European courts did not withdraw the arrest warrants against the Rwandan nationals.
Yet another reason may also have motivated Kigali to establish the Mucyo Commission and this relates to the growing domestic unhappiness around Kagame's increasingly authoritarian rule. According to Amnesty International (AI), freedom of expression and movement continues to be restricted in Rwanda. Furthermore the security services were implicated in various human rights violations, including the use of excessive force and torture. Human Rights Watch (HRW) concurs with this assessment. According to them, police officers have killed at least 20 detainees since late 2006, claiming they were trying to escape. Asked to explain the deaths, a HRW report states, "...a police official said the detainees - even those charged with ordinary crimes like theft of electrical cable - had shown `genocidal ideology'". In Rwanda, today, any form of criticism against the government is frowned upon and academics and the media are routinely attacked. According to AI, in February a Congolese law professor, Idesbald Byakuza Katabaruka was arrested and charged with "threatening state security" and "discrimination and sectarianism". He was in Kigali to teach a law course. The charges emanated from articles written by Prof. Katabaruka which were highly critical of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Also in February, Jean Bosco Gasasira, the editor of Umuvigizi newspaper was assaulted with iron bars by three unidentified men in Kigali after publishing several articles critical of the RPF, including one alleging nepotism within the RPF. A suspect in the attack has been linked to senior military intelligence officials but has not been brought to trial. Journalists critical of the state, are often accused of inciting ethnic hatred in order to silence them. Small wonder, then that in 2007 Rwanda ranked 181 out of 195 countries in terms of respect for press freedom by the United States-based organization, Freedom House. Political leaders and civil society fare none the better. Former Rwandan president Pasteur Bizimungu was imprisoned on charges of forming a criminal association and inciting rebellion after he attempted to form a political party to rival the dominant RPF, according to HRW. AI meanwhile has noted with concern the enforced disappearance of Augustin Cyiza, a prominent member of civil society, and Leonard Hitimana, a member of the Transitional National Assembly in 2003. Since then, AI asserts, "...officials have denied knowledge of there whereabouts, and have carried out no rigorous investigations into their disappearances".
Popular discontent in Rwanda, however is not only directed at the authoritarianism of the RPF but also its mismanagement of the economy. Despite Rwanda's rapid economic growth, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has noted with concern the large and growing, potentially destabilizing, inequalities between classes and region. Once again Kigali's reaction has been highly defensive. According to HRW, "The cabinet angrily forced the minister who had approved the report to disavow it. Government employees involved in producing the report were sanctioned and one of its Rwandan authors was denounced publicly by an official".
Given the internal discontent with the Kagame regime, the Mucyo Commission becomes a useful sideshow for Kigali's political mandarins. In the same way that Robert Mugabe uses the colonial past to detract from his failures, in the same way that the ruling ANC in South Africa makes use of apartheid and race to deflect citizens' attentions from their poor governance record, the genocide bogey becomes a useful distraction to Rwanda's own myriad failures.
This politics of the naming of genocide is unfortunate since ultimately it is playing political football with the real victims of genocide and their memory and must not be countenanced. Mechanisms need to be developed to `red-card states' playing politics with something as serious as genocide. Recently we have witnessed Georgians and Russians accusing each other of human rights atrocities and genocide in South Ossetia. One suggestion here is that the naming of a conflict situation as"genocide" should be left to a specific international institution like the International Criminal Court (ICC) as opposed to any state actor which is motivated by national interest or personal gain.
More prosaically, the global genocide regime and its international law corollary need to be strengthened if the international community is serious about undertaking preventive action rather than corrective action. At face value, there appears to be a strong legal regime in place. On 9 December 1948 the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was passed unanimously by the UN General Assembly - Resolution 260 III. This Genocide Convention forbade governments to take steps to destroy any ethnic, religious or national group. Moreover, on 18 December 1992, the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to Ethnic, Religious or Linguistic Minorities was adopted by the UN General Assembly - Resolution 47/135. In Article 1 of the Declaration it calls on states to protect the existence and identities of minorities and to adopt appropriate legislation to achieve these ends. Laudable as this Declaration is, it suffers from one major drawback: it is not legally binding.
But there are other problems with international law. According to Stephen Ryan, international law could become more open to group rights and autonomy and should reassess its hostility to the right of national self-determination. According to Gurr and Harff, international law is lacking in three key areas:

Clear parameters identifying situations that warrant humanitarian intervention;
New laws that attach sanctions (punishment) to crimes committed (in line with the Responsibility to Protect document); and
Standards that identify what strategies should be applied to what kinds of violations.

If the international community is to be taken seriously about its promise of "Never again," then these deficiencies need to be rectified for a preventive genocide regime that has teeth!

* Professor Hussein Solomon lectures in the Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria where he is also Director of the Centre for International Political Studies (CiPS).