The court confirmed a municipal decree by Orléans mayor Serge Grouard, which had refused the burial on grounds that it risked turning the cemetery into a site of denial or glorification of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.
Zigiranyirazo, once a prominent member of Rwanda's former ruling elite, was convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 2008 before being acquitted a year later on procedural grounds.
Ibuka France noted that this acquittal did not erase his historically established role within the regime that planned and executed the genocide.
His initial planned burial on August 28 was also blocked by Orléans Mayor Serge Grouard. The Diocese of Orléans Loiret in France, citing Protais Zigiranyirazo's role in the genocide against the Tutsi, also announced that his funeral after his death on August 4, 2025, would be held without a Eucharist and without testimonies.
According to IBUKA, attempts by his family to organize a funeral in France attended by around 400 people, many linked to the former regime, constituted a profound insult to the victims, most of whom never received proper burials.
Ibuka France accused Zigiranyirazo's relatives and supporters of using long-standing 'conspiratorial rhetoric' to shift responsibility away from perpetrators and discredit victims' associations.
The organization praised Mayor Grouard for personally defending the city's decree before the court and also commended local mayors in Saran, Fleury-les-Aubrais, and Saint-Jean-de-la-Ruelle for firmly rejecting any burial in their municipalities.
Their stance, Ibuka France said, reflects a republican duty to resist denial, rehabilitation, or trivialization of the genocide.
Ibuka France further called on the French state to establish stronger safeguards to ensure that no municipal cemetery becomes a platform for denial or glorification of the genocide.
The organization also questioned how Zigiranyirazo's body was transported to Orléans with only authorization from Niger and without the mandatory French consular permit, especially given that he had been barred from entering France during his lifetime.
'Ibuka France will continue, with strength and consistency, to fight denial and any attempt to glorify the genocide against the Tutsi,' the group said.
IGIHE
