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'Black Rage And White Lies': Pierre Pean's Counter-Probe

Hirondelle News Agency (Lausanne)
NEWS
November 23, 2005
Posted to the web November 29, 2005
Paris
Pierre Péan, a French journalist who has conducted a number of sensational
investigations has unveiled a new book entitled "Noires fureurs, blancs
mensonges" published by Editions Mille et une nuits (Fayard group) in which he
has devoted close to 500 pages to an examination of the relationship between
Rwanda and France before, during and after the 1994 genocide.
"This book revisits history as has been presented by most media", Péan told
Hirondelle News Agency by telephone. "It refutes the notion that France was an
accomplice of the Rwandan genocide, in the same way Germany was during the
Holocaust". He added that he "subscribes to that revisionism without any qualms
because the only way to come back to the right path, when history has been
doctored, is to revise it".
In order to dismantle "the most astounding disinformation in history about the
after-war: the forgotten massacres that followed the capture of power by
General Paul Kagame in April 1994, the condemnation of an entire group, the
Hutu, by the international community, as well as the naming of France as an
accomplice of this tragedy", Pierre Péan conducts a counter-investigation into
the Rwandan civil war, the shooting down of a plane carrying president Juvenal
Habyarimana and France's major accusers.
With access to archives in the French presidency, the Elysée, Péan uses minutes
of inter-ministerial meetings on Rwanda to show that although France's
political involvement was questionable - from the military assistance Operation
Noroît (1990-1993), to the "military-humanitarian" Operation Turquoise (July-
September 1994), via the April 1994 evacuation operation codenamed "Amaryllis"-
it was far from being reprehensible.
Péan has set aside several virulent chapters for what he terms the "white
liars" who subscribe to a dissenting view.
Jean Carbonare was until 1995 the head of Survie, an association which the
author calls the "RPF's (Rwandese Patriotic Front, former rebels now in power
in Kigali) kitchen cabinet in France".
Péan has reserved a chapter entitled "The president of Survie is a liar" for
having knowingly told untruths during an appearance on French public television
in January 1993.
As a proof of his partiality, Péan points out that Carbonare was employed by
the new Rwandan regime as an advisor in the president's office, just one year
later.
Pierre Péan also takes shots at other journalists, among them Colette Braeckman
of the Belgian newspaper Le Soir de Brussels, and Patrick de Saint-Exupéry of
Le Figaro in Paris.
Péan says Braeckman accused France of being behind the April 6 shooting down of
Habyarimana's plane.
The author relies on the testimony of an RPF defector, Lieutenant Abdul
Ruzibiza, as well as investigations by French anti-terrorist investigator,
Jean-Louis Bruguière, to show that the attack was carried out by the RPF, "with
the full knowledge that it was going to trigger grand scale massacres as
revenge".
The last chapter of the book is titled: "Bisesero, Patrick de Saint-Exupéry's
shameful manipulation". Here Péan gives a detailed rebuttal of his countryman's
book "L'inavouable. La France au Rwanda" (The Shame: France in Rwanda) which
was published in 2004 by Editions Les Arènes.
In his book, Saint-Exupéry says that a recent lawsuit filed against the French
army for "complicity in genocide" was valid because they refused to come to the
assistance of Tutsis who were in danger in Bisesero. But Péan claims the French
army headquarters had not been informed.
Pean's arguments echo those of former French president François Mitterrand who
at the launching of the "Operation Turquoise" on June 21, 1994 said:
"Here are the facts. Why is France being blamed? Because we did not allow that
a friendly country be destabilised? For having used our full weight to bring
the adversaries to the negotiation table? For having alerted the international
community so they could takeover our efforts? Is that the "despicable policy"
that is being criticized? And even if that policy was despicable, but efficient
and pleasant, which country would have pushed it forward?"
Pierre Péan is also the author of the 1983 best seller "Affaires Africaines"
and L'homme de l'ombre (the man in the shadows)a very critical biography of
Jacques Foccart published in 1990. In the recent years he has also published
successful investigations into the powers of the French state broadcaster TF1,
François Mitterrand's past (Une jeunesse française) and "La face cachée du
Monde" (The Hidden side of the World) co-written with Daniel Cohen in 2004.

   

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