Les militaires français au Rwanda ne savent plus quoi faire, l'humanitaire fait cruellement défaut

Masure, Bruno

Lerner, Olivier

Duquesne, Benoît

Grandidier, Jean-Pierre

8 juillet 1994

19940708

20:00:00

CEST

Journal de 20 heures

Les militaires français au Rwanda ne savent plus quoi faire, l'humanitaire fait cruellement défaut

Pour prévenir les critiques du FPR sur la zone de sécurité, les militaires français multiplient les opérations de désarmement tous azimuts.

ScriptFrance2JournalDe20Heures08071994.pdf

35873 bytes

6

France 2

INA

Transcription d'une émission de télévision

en

- The war in Rwanda: Edouard Balladur will appear in New York on Monday [July 11] before the UN Security Council to try to speed up the deployment of peacekeepers there.
- The humanitarian situation there is indeed particularly dire: just over three million Rwandans have had to flee their towns or villages. And this morning, Alain Juppé brought together representatives of 17 NGOs to raise awareness.
- Rwanda, 6 million inhabitants at the beginning of April. 500,000 people, perhaps more, have been massacred in two months. 3,800,000 Rwandans have been displaced. And those who were lucky enough to survive are not out of the woods yet.
- Everyone agrees today that the humanitarian situation is catastrophic throughout the country. The military no longer knows what to do; humanitarian aid is sorely lacking. This is why Alain Juppé summoned 17 non-governmental organizations to his offices. "Go ahead", he told them, "go quickly". Alain Juppé: "I must say that beyond the differences of opinion on the general political context and the principles of Operation Turquoise, we have received very positive responses and great willingness from these organizations, who recognize that this is an absolute priority".
- To address the situation, they would need to receive 500 tons of food aid per day, five times more than at present. Providing food and water, fighting epidemics. Only humanitarian organizations know how to do it, for a few million francs, of course.
- Jean-Louis Machuron, Pharmacists Without Borders: "We all want to do something. But we also all agree that we must reassure people and try to bring them back to where they came from. Creating large refugee camps won't be enough to provide large-scale humanitarian aid. Furthermore, NGOs don't have sufficient financial resources to intervene with 500,000 or even 1,000,000 million displaced people".
- The Rwandan population will undoubtedly be affected by famine in the coming weeks. The last harvests have been lost, and the next ones have not been planted. The fate of several million people may change with the help of the military, but not without humanitarian organizations.
- On the ground, the situation seems relatively static. Patriotic Front leaders in Kigali continue to criticize the French authorities' plan to establish a kind of protection zone in the southwest of the country. For the RPF, this zone risks serving as a sanctuary for a number of Hutu militiamen guilty of massacres. To forestall these criticisms, the French military is stepping up disarmament operations in all directions.
- A Rwandan gendarme: "We'll see the mayor of Mubuga commune. He'll tell us where the weapons are. Those who want to possess them as part of civil self-defense, we'll give them a weapons certificate. We'll regularize that".
- In this small commune of Mubuga on the edge of the French security zone, the mission of Captain Hervé and his men is to recover weapons, to sort out the gendarmes, soldiers of the Rwandan Armed Forces fleeing with the refugees, and members of the civil defense. And then the others, all the others. Those to whom circumstances and the war have provided a weapon for their own security or to make others insecure. A French soldier in a red beret: "Following our first visit, the message was sent to the population that we would search for armed civilians. We asked them to hide their weapons". These two clearly didn't hear the order. They were walking calmly among the crowd with their gear. Search, explanations. If they want all that back, they'll have to go to Gikongoro to explain themselves to the prefecture.
- And the harvest continues, more and more fruitful. Weapons, the refugees say, were distributed in large numbers before the capture of Butare. Now Butare has fallen, and for the French, if we want this area to become a place of security, it's time to give them back.
- Benoît Duquesne: "Without talking about infiltrations, we can talk about the RPF's push. What is visibly clear in the RPF's game is that, both in Kibuye yesterday evening [July 7] and here to the east of Gikongoro, we can see that it is trying to come and almost lick the walls of this French security zone to push the populations there and to clearly show that its desire is to keep the entire territory, with the exception of this zone of course. […] According to estimates, a million displaced people are flocking to the French security zone. Here, we understand of course the reluctance of humanitarian organizations to get involved in this conflict, in the wake of the French intervention. And at the same time, it is hard to imagine explaining them to the populations who, for the moment, still have a little bit of what they need to survive because they have just left their villages for a few days. But we see and feel very well that the situation in a short time will become really catastrophic here".
- On the political front, the UN special envoy in Kigali today declared himself reasonably optimistic about an imminent ceasefire.
- Since yesterday [July 7], the airport has been reopened to humanitarian flights. But every day, residents are discovering new mass graves.
- It was one of the strongholds of government militias: the Nyamirambo neighborhood in the Rwandan capital was one of the last to fall under the RPF assault. The fighting stopped last Monday [July 4], marking the end of the Battle of Kigali.
- Since then, the Patriotic Front has gathered the thousands of survivors in the grounds of Saint-André College. These refugees are mainly Tutsi but also Hutu. Sometimes things aren't as simple as one might think.
- The RPF and survivors are hunting down the militiamen and soldiers responsible for the massacres three months ago. The immediate concern is to feed this population and maintain a minimum of hygiene. But the desire for revenge is strong. A refugee: "We're reporting them because they're dangerous! These are people who killed thousands of people. And when they haven't found a way to escape, they disguise themselves as civilians and come here".
- Here, France's intervention is frowned upon. It is suspected of having ulterior motives, accused of having fueled ethnic hatred.
- At the foot of the destroyed buildings, corpses of civilians suspected of having been part of government militias lie. The wreckage of cars and armored vehicles, the piles of shell casings are reminders of an intense battle. The massacres have not been erased; there are thousands of corpses mutilated by machetes. Many were not given a human burial, not even a mass grave.

The 20 o'clock news of France 2 of July 8, 1994 is visible in its entirety here: https: https://www.ina.fr/ina-eclaire-actu/video/cab05083570/f2-le-journal-20h-emission-du-8-juillet-1994

https://francegenocidetutsi.fr/fgtshow.php?num=35319