The film has the immense merit to have recalled,
by the actor who incarnates the journalist Patrick de Saint-Exupery,
that the French soldiers were at the genocide gates where
Rwandans with "Tutsi" identification cards were arrested to be executed.
The film equally portrays French colonel Tauzin (alias Rambert in the film),
knowing that the Turquoise forces exfiltrated
the Rwandan genocide military in Zaire (Congo)
in order to rearm for the re-conquest of Rwanda.
RWANDA FRENCH TURQUOISE FILM
The East of Congo undergoes the consequences of this exfiltration,
thousands of old genocide military,
regrouped within the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (DFLR),
terrorising, till to this day, the Congo Tutsi population.
It is to protect them in place of the regular failing army that
the general Laurent Nkunda rebelled in 2002.
The French TV-Film 'Operation Turquoise':
What is Said And Left Unsaid
by Serge Farnel, Rwanda News Agency, Nov 26, 2007
The television film "Operation Turquoise", currently shown on the French television channel Canal Plus, takes its name from the humanitarian intervention that the French drove under UN official mandate from the 22nd June 1994 in Rwanda. The television film is centred on the events that prevail in the Rwandan Bisesero Hills during the first days of this intervention: the 27th June 1994.
The French lieutenant-colonel Jean-Remy Duval (alias Harrege in the film) sent his convoy there and discovered hundreds of defenceless Tutsi trying to escape the orchestrated killings against them by the local authorities. Without, however, leaving a single one of his men at the scene in order to dissuade the attackers with their extermination, the convoy leaves, Duval promising the survivors to return to help them as soon as possible. More than a thousand of them perished during the attacks of an unequal intensity, the onslaught ending the 30th June, the date that the French military finally arrived with help.
What happened for the French army to lack protection in this way? It is notably this that Alain Tasma's film is tempted to reply. Two versions conflict. On one side, the French army emphasises Duval's bad communication to his superiors. On the other side, they are accused of having left their old allies the time to finish their "work".
The film will not unfortunately supply the viewer with all of the elements to allow him to forge a definitive opinion on what is today known as the "Bisesero controversy". Three essential parts are missing from the puzzle.
First missing part. The Commander Marin Gillier (alias Cormery in the film), as the head of the Turquoise detachment in the Bisesero sector, writes, in a letter addressed four years after the events to the French Mission d'Information Parlementaire pour le Rwanda, to have only been confronted with the Rwandan tragedy from the 30th June. It is this version that the film subscribes to by omitting to present the scene in which the officer is informed of the massacres in the Bisesero area, four days before to bring help to the Tutsi survivors.
It is the Times journalist Sam Kiley who makes him aware in front of the CNN cameras! Also the official French army version condemning Duval for not having correctly informed about his discovery the 27th June, badly resists as Marin Gillier, had, as for him, been informed the day before by another source. Otherwise, in accordance with the revelations made by Thierry Prungnaud, on France Culture the 22nd April 2005, the rescue plan of the 30th June would only have resulted in his disobedience of Marin Gillier's orders, acting by going to Bisesero to discover, amongst the Tutsi met three days earlier by Duval, those who survived the attacks by the genocide military men.
Second missing part. A French speaking Hutu instructor that Duval had just met in the village of Mubuga guides the convoy to Bisesero. The film shows the Tutsi survivors that they discover in Bisesero telling the French officer that their guide is one of the main militiamen. If the film equally shows Duval's convoy abandon them without protection, it however misses out the fact that the French officer accompanies the guide back, then immediately frees him although he was found out as being part of the genocide. This was explained during the hearings of the Rwandan Commission which delivered its report on Friday 16th November to the President Paul Kagame.
The author of this article attended all of the hearings relating to the fact testimonies, last December in Kigali. Duval's guide explained at the time to have been charged by the Gishyita burgomaster, organiser of the Bisesero massacres, to transmit his orders to different militiamen chiefs in the region. Almost four thousand genocide military men were conveyed from neighbouring areas to then be gathered at the commune's central square for a large-scale attack against the Tutsi that the guide had discovered the same time as Duval. The film does not show this scene.
Third missing part. At the time of the moving of the Rwandan Commission to Gishyita as well as on the Bisesero Hills, the author of the present article had been able to hear Duval's guide explain that hundreds of Interahamwe (genocide militiamen) were gathered in the main square in Gishyita, hardly two hundred meters from Marin Gillier's encampment.
Would he really ignore, since the revelations of the 26th June, that these groups would not go to fight against infiltrated men of RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front constituted for a large party of the Tutsi exiled since the 1959 pogroms) but to massacre defenceless Tutsi civilians? It is worth asking the question.
According to the witnesses heard on the site, the French military participated in the meetings with the Interahamwe heads in Mika Muhimana's bar whilst at the place of the bar, the militia men gathered, to whom Mika gave advice before them going to Bisesero to kill the Tutsi civilians. Mika has since been sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide by the ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda).
According to numerous corroborating witnesses, the French soldiers posted at a gate in Gishyita, opened it several times in order to let the genocide convoys armed with rifles and bludgeons go to Bisesero to massacre the surviving Tutsi there.
The image of the whole puzzle makes "Bisesero controversy" become an event of an exceptional gravity for certain officers of the French army.
The film, besides the fact it reopens it, has the immense merit to have recalled, by the bias of the actor who incarnates the journalist being the first to have interrogated this affair, Patrick de Saint-Exupery, that the French soldiers were, several years earlier, at the genocide gates where the Rwandans with "Tutsi" identification cards were arrested to be executed.
The film equally participates, by the intermediate made by the French colonel Tauzin (alias Rambert in the film), knowing that the Turquoise forces exfiltrated the Rwandan genocide military in Zaire (today the Democratic Republic of Congo - DRC) in order to rearm for the re-conquest of Rwanda.
The East of the DRC undergoes the consequences of this exfiltration, thousands of old genocide military, regrouped within the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (DFLR), terrorising, till to this day, the Congo Tutsi population. It is to protect them in place of the regular failing army that the general Laurent Nkunda rebelled in 2002.
At the beginning of the year, the author of these lines discussed with the rebellious general on the heights of Kirolirwe, in his secret HQ East of Congo. At this time, by his intermediate, he accused, with evidence to prove it, the French general Christian Houdet, then military head of the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo of refusing to disarm the DLFR.
One question at the heart of the conflict that ruthlessly acts today in this part of the World and could perhaps finally come to a solution with the Nairobi agreements signed the 9th November between the DRC and Rwanda. An agreement that gives Kinshasa until the 1st December to unveil its war plan against the old genocide military men exfiltrated by Turquoise.
FRANCE NO RSVP RWANDA (reader Badang asks about french response to accusations of Bisesero genocide survivors)
French TV-Film 'Operation Turquoise' (What is Said And Left Unsaid). Rwanda News Agency, Nov 26 2007
Reader Ward wonders where to see the Rwanda movie "Operation Turquoise"
HILLYWOOD RWANDA and BISESERO HILL OF SORROW
Jackie Jura
~ an independent researcher monitoring local, national and international events ~
email: orwelltoday@gmail.com
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