“Yesterday night the Rwandan foreign ministry telephoned to inform me that I was no longer accredited for the ceremonies,” the French ambassador Michel Flesch said on Monday, Al-Jazeera reported.
The French government initially announced that it was pulling out of the events after President Paul Kagame again accused France, an ally of the Hutu nationalist government prior to the 1994 killings, of aiding the murder of 800,000 ethnic Tutsis.
Speaking to the weekly Jeune Afrique, Kagame denounced the “direct role of Belgium and France in the political preparation for the genocide”, and said French soldiers were both accomplices and “actors” in the bloodbath.
Former colonial power Belgium, which unlike France has apologised to Rwanda for failing to prevent the genocide, has sent a senior delegation for the commemorations.
At today’s ceremony, President Kagame will light a torch at a memorial in the capital Kigali to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the genocide in which 800,000 people died. The torch will burn for 100 days, the length of time it took government soldiers and Hutu militia to kill hundreds of thousands of people, largely Tutsis, in 1994.
Source: FARS
