A French court has convicted Charles Onana, a French-Cameroonian author, for minimizing the Rwandan genocide in his writings. Onana, 60, was fined €8,400 ($8,900; £7,000), while his publisher Damien Serieyx of Éditions du Toucan was ordered to pay €5,000. The court also awarded €11,000 in damages to human rights organizations that filed the case.
The Paris court found that Onana’s book, Rwanda, the Truth About Operation Turquoise, published in 2019, violated French laws against genocide denial and incitement to hatred. In the book, Onana dismissed the claim that Rwanda’s Hutu-led government had orchestrated the 1994 genocide as “one of the biggest scams of the century.”
During the genocide, around 800,000 people—mainly Tutsis and moderate Hutus—were killed by Hutu extremists in just 100 days. The court ruled that Onana’s work “trivialized and contested” the genocide “in an outrageous manner,” affirming that France will not serve as a refuge for genocide denial.
The case was brought by the NGO Survie and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), who accused Onana and Serieyx of “publicly contesting a crime against humanity.” Prosecutor Richard Gisagara hailed the verdict as a historic victory for justice and genocide survivors, noting it marked the first conviction in Europe for genocide denial related to Rwanda.
Rwanda’s Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe praised the ruling, describing it as a “landmark decision.”
Onana’s lawyer, Emmanuel Pire, defended the book as the result of a decade-long political science investigation, arguing it did not deny the genocide or the targeted killings of Tutsis. Both Onana and his publisher have appealed the verdict.
Under French law, denial or minimization of any genocide officially recognized by the state is a criminal offense.