For 20 years, a collective has been tracking down Rwandan genocidaires still hidden in France: "These are people who report to us"
Cairo: Hani Kamal El-Din
Thirty years after the start of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, which will be commemorated on Sunday April 7, survivors of the massacres are still waiting for those responsible to be found and judged. Dozens and dozens of executioners have found refuge in France and are still hiding among the population with complete impunity. For years, a collective has been working to track down Rwandan genocidaires on French soil.
This is in particular the fight that Alain Gauthier has been leading for 20 years: hunting down the Rwandan genocidaires with his civil code under his arm and his heavy suitcase filled with victims’ testimonies. President of the association The Collective of Civil Parties of Rwanda, he estimates that around a hundred executioners still live in hiding in France.
“Either these are people who are being reported to us from Rwanda, or we are hearing about them here,” he explains. “I am thinking in particular of gendarme ‘Biguma’ who was tried last year and who will be tried in November on appeal. It is an anonymous letter which arrived at our house informing us of his presence in the Rennes region in giving us his exact address, he remembers And from there, we sought to find out where he had committed crimes and we went to the scene of the crimes and there we met a very large number of survivors.”.
Six trials have already taken place in France since the genocide, but justice is too slow, deplores Alain Gauthier: “There has been reconciliation, it will be more and more difficult.”
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