Dafroza Gauthier, who devoted her life to tracking down, with her husband, Alain Gauthier, the genocidaires of the Tutsi in Rwanda who had taken refuge in France, died in Reims on Saturday October 3, at the age of 72, her husband announced on Sunday to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“My thoughts go to my children and grandchildren, but also to all those who were devastated by the Tutsi genocide, to the victims for whom Dafroza dedicated his life,” he declared.
“I would like to thank everyone who says that Dafroza is a great lady who changed something in their lives,” he said.
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Often nicknamed “the Klarsfelds of Rwanda” in reference to the Nazi hunters Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, the Gauthier couple are at the origin – with the Collective of Civil Parties for Rwanda (CPCR), which they co-founded in 2001 – of almost all the complaints against Rwandans who had taken refuge in France and were suspected of having taken part in the Tutsi genocide, which left more than 800,000 dead from April to July 1994.
“All these deaths that live within us”
For nearly 30 years, Dafroza Mukarumongi-Gauthier, a former chemical engineer, traveled the hills of Rwanda with her husband, on their leave, then during their retirement, in search of testimonies from ex-killers, prisoners and survivors.
Their lives were turned upside down on April 8, 1994, when Dafroza’s mother was shot dead in a parish where she had taken refuge. “Uncles, nephews, cousins” will also be exterminated. Between “70 and 80 people”, or her entire family on her mother’s side, will die, she told AFP in 2024. “It’s dizzying and an abyss… all these deaths that inhabit us”.
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Due to the historical links between Paris and the regime of the Rwandan president at the time, Juvénal Habyarimana, many genocidaires found refuge in France and benefited for years from a “complacent” welcome, denounced the Gauthiers.
For Dafroza Gauthier, “justice allows us to mourn”, to “end impunity”. “What we do during a trial is to rehabilitate the victims, to say their names and what they were,” she told AFP in 2024. “It is this moral reparation that the victims expect.”
With AFP
