Rwandan leader attacks France over genocide

Rwanda has entered a week of remembrance for genocide victims with a strongly-worded attack on France by the African nation’s leader.

In a speech at a memorial ceremony President Paul Kagame said France “should have tasted our wrath” for what he called their complicity in the 1994 bloodshed.

It was the latest salvo in a diplomatic row between the two countries over the mass-killings.

“It’s important to remember the genocide,” Kagame said. “I advise all Rwandans who played a role in the genocide, and countries who supported it, to acknowledge their guilt and seek forgiveness from from Rwandans.”

Kagame commanded a mostly Tutsi rebel group that toppled the Hutu regime largely
responsible for the slaughter in which 800,000
Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.

Paris has always insisted it protected people from the advancing Hutu militias.

But some victims say France helped prop up the Hutu government and that French soldiers even aided the killers.

Rwanda cut ties with France last year after a French judge issued arrest warrants for Kagame’s top associates.

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