Pendant que le Rwanda est à feu et à sang, la communauté rwandaise à Paris vit dans l'angoisse

Fernandez, Laëtitia

Malverde, Fernando

31 mai 1994

19940531

19:00:00

CEST

Journal de 19 heures (Paris Ile-de-France)

Pendant que le Rwanda est à feu et à sang, la communauté rwandaise à Paris vit dans l'angoisse

ScriptFrance3JournalDe19HeuresParisIDF31051994.pdf

20388 bytes

2

France 3

INA

Transcription d'une émission de télévision

FR

- While Rwanda is on fire and bloodshed, the Rwandan community in Paris lives in anguish. They are a hundred installed for a long time or arrived very recently. But all of them have family there. News is rare and everyone clings to the slightest hope without believing it too much.
- Charles is perhaps the only survivor of the French Cultural Center in Kigali. For a month he has been in Paris where he has joined his sisters. After being locked up by the militia in his apartment, he managed to escape. It was the Belgian authorities who evacuated him to Nairobi. He is a miracle of the Rwandan tragedy. Charles Rubagumya, librarian at the French Cultural Center in Kigali: "I stayed at my house for five days. I did not move, I did not go out. Because I was afraid to go down, for fear that I would also die like the others. I had never seen a person dying before my eyes. It was truly a nightmare".
- This nightmare, these two men who have been living in Paris for several months are also living it. One is Hutu, the other is Tutsi. Both reject the term ethnic conflict to designate the genocide unleashed by a beleaguered dictatorship. Both know that part of their family has been massacred. With each passing day, the doubt becomes more and more unbearable. Jean-Pierre Rubulika, intern at the Caisse Française de Développement: "At home, everything was destroyed. My wife and my children fled to a church. In this church, they shot everyone. I don't know if 'they were able to escape but I'm pessimistic". Antoine Nyagahene, professor at the University of Kigali: "I had a family, I left it there when I came here. But I have just learned that my wife was killed a week ago. I am Hutu , my wife was Tutsi. But at the very start of the fighting, my brothers who were in Cyangugu were killed. To say that the Tutsis were killed but that the Hutus were also killed. Our children no longer have anyone to take care of them. They are motherless. And I am here, helpless".
- This feeling of powerlessness and despair, all Rwandans living in Paris share it. Here, once a week, a dozen women meet to dance but above all to be together. Nido Uwera, dancer: "It's a way to keep hope. And I think it's also a way to fight".