Envoyé spécial - La vie en sursis

Klotz, Jean-Christophe

Vincent, Patrick

26 mai 1994

19940526

20:50:00

CEST

Envoyé spécial - La vie en sursis

1994-05-26fr2EnvoyeSpecialLaVieEnSursis.mp4

61200763 bytes

France 2

INA

Vidéo

FR

- We will first go to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda where it all started about a month ago. The rebels surround the city, the carnage begins. No one is spared: women, old people, children are murdered with submachine guns and axes. The horror is unspeakable but two men try to protect the community they are in charge of. The first is still getting there, but for how long? This is Marc Vaiter who takes care of children in an orphanage in the city. The second is a priest, Father Henri Blanchard, in whose church hundreds of inhabitants had come to take refuge. This is the story of these two men who fight for the genocide to finally stop.
- In the devastated city center of Kigali, 70 entrenched orphans try to survive by preparing for the worst. Between the rebels who are pounding the city and the militiamen in search of new massacres, Kigali is on fire and bloodshed.
- Most of these children saw their parents massacred before their eyes. Of Hutu or Tutsi ethnicity, if they are still alive it is thanks to the continuous presence at their side of Marc Vaiter, the person in charge of this orphanage. Marc is one of the very rare French people to have refused to leave the country, risking his life. Marc Vaiter: "Here we are digging because there is shelling and we are afraid of shrapnel. We are very afraid that the Patriotic Front will return to town. So much so that we want to protect ourselves from stray bullets".
- A prayer before the evening meal. It is at night that the anxiety is heaviest. The bombardments subsided but another much more terrible threat hangs over the orphanage: Hutu militias ransack the town in search of the few Tutsis still alive. Marc has so far succeeded in deterring the killers who have come several times to the gates of the orphanage.
- A few hundred meters away, while we were shooting these images, a reception center was looted and a dozen Tutsi women massacred with machetes.
- Marc Vaiter: "I'm too scared of the night. People sometimes take advantage of it to loot. At first we had people with grenades and then machetes. Once it was also grenades and machine guns. there were four who wanted to attack the children. I went to say hello to them and then I told them that I was French and that I was there for the children. And so we calmed them down".
- With the arrival of dawn, the fear of massacres recedes. So sometimes, when the RPF artillerymen grant a few hours of respite by ceasing their bombardments, Marc takes the opportunity to keep his diary, the chronicle of the real nightmare that Kigali has been living for more than a month now. Marc Vaiter: "I'm here writing in fear or with fear. The shots ring out and you can't know what can happen. I put the children in a hallway with mattresses against the wall so that they can be better protected in case. My problem is to hide the food, to pretend that we have nothing to eat and that it is in the evening that people bring us food. And then I didn't buy anything else for fear that people would think that I have money. We have so little, 30,000 Rwandan francs. But if I start buying anything, people will think, and besides, being white, that I have money and will come to attack us. What can we do for us? Evacuate us. We are so threatened, every day. You never know if we going to spend the night or if we're not going to be forced in. And then in relation to what has already happened, in relation to all these massacres, we say to ourselves: 'One more massacre, they don't care'".
- At the other end of the city center, Father Blanchard also lives cut off in his parish. When the massacres began, the missionary opened his church to several hundred terrified refugees. The next day, soldiers and militiamen forced the doors. Anything that looked like a Tutsi was massacred. Father Blanchard will count 15 dead.
- Father Blanchard: "People were refugees here. Especially on Thursday [April 7] the day after the attack on the President. And people came to take refuge. both Hutu and Tutsi. I even said to the soldier who was here: 'But are you even going to kill the relatives of your friends, of your buddies who are in combat?' Because there are some who were also refugees here. People came to take refuge indiscriminately. For them the church represented hope, security. I saw people killed sometimes by bullets, sometimes by stab wounds, sometimes by clubbing. It was unbearable. I also remember the screaming a lot And I remember a 10 year old child who was killed outside our door And calling for help and screaming and we were helpless because we couldn't get out without endangering people who themselves were with us".
- 55 children and some women live barricaded in the parish. Together with his German colleague, Father Otto, Father Blanchard has so far saved them from certain death. As with Marc Vaiter's orphanage, the Red Cross somehow manages to maintain contact with Father Blanchard. A few bags of food per week allow the small community to survive.
- Father Blanchard: "Here is our chapel which has been transformed into dormitories for the little children. It's been a month and a half since these children have been able to put their noses outside and see the sun practically, except through the windows I constantly ask myself the question for these children: 'How are they going to get out of this ordeal?'".
- At 70 in a three-room house, Marc Vaiter sometimes has to let the children out in the garden despite the risks, for a short break. Marc Vaiter: "He's a little baby. When people were running around, on May 8-9, there was a lady who almost threw him at us. During that famous night, we received around twenty children at more or less. And afterwards we had children practically every day. They did not hesitate to massacre children. There are children whose arms, for example, or legs were cut off. That was really the horror for days and days. A dozen days ago, we killed 15 people who were at school, teachers. So how far? We wonder how long".
- Europeans living in Rwanda were evacuated in the early hours of the massacres. When the French soldiers come for Marc, he gathers all the orphans around Claude, the eldest child. Marc wants to take them with him, to shelter them. But the instruction of the soldiers is clear: no question of evacuating the children. Only Marc benefits from French protection. Marc Vaiter: "At one point, I almost left. There were two children who cried. And Claude spoke up, he said: 'If he leaves, we're all dead'. And there something happened, I think I heard his deep distress. And all the trust also that rested on my person. If I had left my life would have been completely dead".
- At Father Blanchard's, the phone keeps ringing. A few Tutsis still alive are holed up in Kigali. They no longer know who to ask for protection. Terrible case of conscience for Father Blanchard: as for Marc Vaiter, there was no question of welcoming Tutsi adults within its walls, without risking the lives of children. He can only encourage them to stay hidden until the killings stop. Father Blanchard: "These are people who have taken refuge in a family and who now believe that the family is in danger. And who want five people who have taken refuge in their home to leave. So obviously these five people are threatened. They ask if we can do something for them. We act second by second, minute by minute, because these are such difficult situations. And we always risk endangering not only those people we would like to help but also those we are already helping. . The many children and the few wives we have. It's exhausting. It's very hard to see how a country can go towards self-destruction and completely tear itself apart".
- French lessons at Marc Vaiter's orphanage. The children should be kept as busy as possible inside the house. Outside the street belongs to Hutu militiamen, killers armed with machetes who have set up roadblocks every 200 meters. Like Father Blanchard, Marc knows very well that one day or another the killers will return. Marc Vaiter: "Having stayed, it allowed another way of seeing life, in this moment when we are going to die. It's true that somewhere, humanly, I want to live because I want to continue to contribute to helping these children. And on the other hand, you still have to make up your mind. I say that no one is indispensable in the end, but everyone does what they can and according to their means, according to their convictions too. But it's true, when you see these children, I think you want to live to try to continue to bring them things".
- Father Blanchard: "Believing in God, believing in man. It is perhaps believing in man that is the most difficult for me when I see what has happened. But I do everything I I can try to remember the facts as precisely as possible. Because it seems to me that a catastrophe like this, massacres like that, we have no right to forget. is a terrible lesson where fear, suspicion, mistrust can lead us".
- Jean-Christophe Klotz, interviewed after the broadcast of the report: "Marc managed to get a message across a few days ago. A shell fell not far from the house and shrapnel injured two children. Marc hardly ever goes out. He wants to stay close to these children and, for safety reasons, the children absolutely cannot go out into the street. One can wonder why these children were not evacuated with the We know that there are a hundred orphans who have been evacuated. It seems that it was an orphanage which depended on the presidential family. When I asked Marc why he had not been able to leave, he said that when he wanted to leave with the children, the soldiers replied that it was not possible, that there were no convoys available.As for Father Blanchard, he is holding on with his German colleague who is Blue Helmets are sent to protect civilian populations. They are currently 400. They are trying the best they can and they are already managing to work miracles while waiting for the other 5,000 to arrive. The Canadian general who takes care of them is someone extremely determined, who is firmly determined to stop all this. Now, the majority of the massacres have already taken place. It's already a bit late, of course. But we still have to go, we have to stop all that".