Didier Tauzin : « S'il y avait une nouvelle poussée FPR, 250 000 personnes pourraient continuer leur déplacement dans notre direction et menacer les gens du camp de Nyarushishi »

Cachart, Éric

Babey, Pierre

Tual, Joseph

27 juin 1994

19940627

19:30:00

CEST

Journal de 19 heures 30 [6:52]

Didier Tauzin : « S'il y avait une nouvelle poussée FPR, 250 000 personnes pourraient continuer leur déplacement dans notre direction et menacer les gens du camp de Nyarushishi »

Un premier détachement de parachutistes s'est engagé aujourd'hui sur une centaine de kilomètres à l'intérieur du Rwanda déchiré depuis 80 jours par la guerre civile.

1994-06-27-19fr3.mp4

17037260 bytes

France 3

INA

Journal télévisé

FR

- A first patrol of French paratroopers is engaged today for an observation mission over a hundred kilometers on the territory of Rwanda.
- In addition, some 1,300 French soldiers from Operation Turquoise are now in place in the rear bases on the border between Zaire and Rwanda. The installation of two field hospitals continues.
- Operation Turquoise is therefore set up in Rwanda. Nearly 1,300 French soldiers are installed this evening at the Zairian border. A first detachment of paratroopers even committed today to a hundred kilometers inside this country torn apart for 80 days by civil war.
- According to the French authorities, the first objective is to secure as many populations as possible threatened by the fighting. But of course with the ambiguity of a mission of a strictly humanitarian nature and therefore with the concern to avoid all confrontations.
- Our special envoys went today to a refugee camp in southern Rwanda, in a less exposed region where the French soldiers are trying to provide security and comfort.
- These few Rwandan gendarmes have long been the one and only defenders of this Nyarushishi refugee camp. Exactly 7,887 refugees immaculately settled here by the Rwandan Red Cross.
- Traumatized by the massacres of recent weeks, this population especially needed to be reassured and comforted. The main benefit of the presence of the French soldiers is above all of a psychological nature in this camp of 8,000 Tutsi refugees who believed that they were exterminated until the last moment either by the militias or by the Rwandan Armed Forces.
- Presence in the camp, patrols around, about fifty French soldiers thus ensure the security of Nyarushishi. For the moment no threat is imminent but the situation could deteriorate rapidly if other refugees arrive here. Colonel Didier Tauzin: "There would be 250,000 displaced people in the Gikongoro region about forty kilometers to our east. And if the fighting continued, if there was a new RPF push, these people could therefore continue their movement in our direction. And then, I don't know if the people in this camp would not be threatened again".
- To the east of Nyarushishi there are still other thousands of displaced people. The French soldiers will systematically visit them and offer them protection.

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