Author Charles Onana tried for protesting the Rwandan genocide

The Franco-Cameroonian author Charles Onana is on trial from Monday before the Paris criminal court for complicity in protesting the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994, the second trial of its kind in France.

In a book published in October 2019 and entitled “Rwanda, the truth about Operation Turquoise. When the archives speak »Mr. Onana states in particular that “the conflict and massacres in Rwanda have nothing to do with the genocide of the Jews! » (p.43).

“The conspiracy theory of a Hutu regime having planned a +genocide+ in Rwanda constitutes one of the greatest scams of the 20th century”he adds (p. 198).

Charles Onana, 60, who also presents himself as a political scientist and investigative journalist, is best known for his controversial writings on the Rwandan genocide.

Following a complaint filed in 2020 by the Survie associations, the Human Rights League (LDH) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Mr. Onana and the publishing director of Editions du Toucan at at the time of publication, Damien Serieyx, were indicted in 2022 for “public protest of crime against humanity”according to the referral order that AFP was able to consult.

The publisher is being prosecuted primarily and the author for complicity, as is customary in press law.

“We are faced with an outspoken negationist who cannot take refuge behind any pretext”declared to AFP Me Sabrina Goldman, lawyer for Licra, also a civil party. “For there to be a genocide, there must be a concerted plan, which he rejects”she said.

In addition, she emphasizes, the accused puts “systematically in quotation marks the term +genocide+” and advances the thesis of a “double genocide” Tutsi and Hutu.

The genocide committed in 1994 in Rwanda, at the instigation of the extremist Hutu regime then in power, left around 800,000 dead between April and July 1994, mainly among the Tutsi minority, but also among moderate Hutus, according to the UN.

“History”

Some controversial figures have regularly highlighted the fact that another genocide, committed by the Tutsi of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF, still in power in Kigali), took place immediately, in retaliation against the Hutu.

“Mr. Onana does not contest the genocide at all”reacted to AFP his lawyer, Me Emmanuel Pire.

“This is the work of a political scientist resulting from 10 years of research to understand the mechanisms of the genocide before, during and after, but Mr. Onana does not question the fact that the Tutsi were particularly targeted”he added.

Since January 2017, the law on freedom of the press punishes the act of denying, minimizing or trivializing in an outrageous manner all genocides recognized by France.

The first trial for contesting the Rwandan genocide was held in 2022. French journalist Natacha Polony was prosecuted for comments which had caused great emotion, evoking “the kind of case where we had bastards facing other bastards”.

The judges had released her, considering that seeing in her words “a contestation of the existence of the genocide” resulted “an extrapolation of the remarks in question”.

Mr. Onana’s trial will be “historical, since there is not yet any case law strictly speaking in connection with Rwanda” on questions of negationism, Camille Lesaffre, campaign manager for the Survie association, told AFP. “We will mainly rely on jurisprudence linked to the Shoah”.

“This will make it possible to clarify the legal limits of the comments that can be made about this crime against humanity”she added.

Around twenty witnesses, including former French and Rwandan military officers, were called by the defense, while the civil parties called on historians and law professors.