Journalist Natacha Polony will be tried on Tuesday and Wednesday before the Paris Criminal Court for contesting the genocide of Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994, a first in France according to the lawyers in the case. Since January 2017, the law on the freedom of the press punishes the fact of denying, minimizing or trivializing in an outrageous way all the genocides recognized by France, and not only that of the Jews during the Second World War.
An intervention on France Inter
On March 18, 2018 on France Inter, Natacha Polony, also managing editor of the weekly Marianne, had mentioned the Rwandan genocide, considering it “necessary to look in the face at what happened at that time and which there is ultimately nothing of a distinction between bad guys and good guys”. Before adding, “unfortunately, we are typically in the kind of case where we had bastards facing other bastards (…) That is to say that I think there was no on one side the good guys and on the other the bad guys in this story, ”she added.
An association of victims lodges a complaint
The association supporting the victims of the Rwandan genocide Ibuka had filed a complaint with a civil action against the journalist. The Mrap (Movement against racism and for friendship between peoples) and the Rwandan community of France joined her on the bench of the civil parties. At the end of 2020 and against the opinion of the prosecution, an investigating judge had sent the columnist to trial for “disputing the existence of crimes against humanity”.