The author was ordered to pay a fine of €8,400 ($8,900; £7,000), for denying the events of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, which saw the massacre of about 800,000 Rwandans, primarily the Tutsis, at the hands of ethnic Hutu extremists.
Onana relayed in his 2019 book, the Truth About Operation Turquoise that the idea that the Hutu government had planned a genocide in Rwanda is “one of the biggest scams” of the last century.
For this, the French court found him guilty of genocide denial and incitement to hatred, both of which are against French laws.
As per the court’s ruling, Onana’s book had “trivialized” and “contested” in “an outrageous manner” the genocide that occurred between April and July 1994.
Olivier Nduhungirehe, the foreign minister of Rwanda, lauded the verdict of the court and called it a “landmark decision” in a post on X.
Onana and Damien Serieyx, his publisher who was also asked to pay a fine of €5,000 were sued for “publicly contesting a crime against humanity” by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the non-governmental organization Survie.
The book’s critics argue that it minimizes the atrocities of the Rwandan genocide and misrepresents historical facts.
As stated by Emmanuel Pire, Onana’s attorney, the book was “the work of a political scientist based on 10 years of research to understand the mechanisms of the genocide before, during, and after” (AFP news agency, October).
He maintained that Onana did not deny the existence of genocide or the specific targeting of Tutsis, as per the BBC.
However, the court asked both men to pay €11,000 in compensation to human rights organizations that had brought the lawsuit against them.
The Rwandan Genocide
The Rwandan Genocide was the massacre of the Tutsi ethnic minority by Rwanda’s Hutu majority over a 100-day period from April to July 1994. Approximately 800,000 people were slaughtered during this period, making it one of the most heinous genocides in contemporary history.
Long-standing conflicts between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes, exacerbated by colonial policies, provided the foundation for the genocide.
An aircraft accident on April 6, 1994, which saw to the death of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana (a Hutu), served as the immediate catalyst for this mass murder spree. Hutu extremists accused Tutsis and used the incident to justify mass massacres.
