A French Journalist, Natacha Polony will be put on trial for saying that the victims and executioners of 1994 Rwandan genocide are the same.
Despite acknowledging her mistake and pushing for negotiation, on December 11, 2020, Parisian judge Milca Michel-Gabriel nevertheless decided to refer the case to the criminal court.
According to a court order dated December 11, she will be tried for ‘contesting the existence of a crime against humanity by word, writing, image or means of communication to the public by electronic means’.
The French journalist is being charged for a remark he made in March 2018 on the radio France Inter, where she was an editorialist at the time.
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Talking to the essayist and candidate for the European elections Raphael Glucksman, Natacha Polony gave a very personal view of the genocide perpetrated from April to July 1994 against the Tutsis of Rwanda.
She said: ‘It is necessary to look at what happened at that time, which is not at all a distinction between the bad guys and the good guys’, said Polony. ‘Unfortunately we are typically in the kind of case where we had bastards against other bastards […] That is to say, I think that there were not on one side the good guys and on the other side the bad guys in this story.’
By speaking around the victims and executioners of the genocide against the Tutsis and referring them as the same, Natacha Polony attracted the wrath of the survivors’ association Ibuka France and the International League against Racism and Antisemitism (whose civil case was declared inadmissible for procedural reasons). According to these associations, the comments made on the France Inter radio station were akin to a ‘challenge to the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda.’
During the preliminary investigation, Natacha Polony ‘acknowledged having made the disputed remarks, but contested the meaning given by the civil party and stated that the program in question had been broadcast live,’ adding that ‘her remarks were aimed at the leaders’ but that ‘the genocide had indeed existed’.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK