Citation
BISESERO, Rwanda, July 1 --
Taking a risk that will make their presence more precarious, the
French military decided today to position 50 troops in these mountains
to protect several hundred wounded and hungry members of the Tutsi
ethnic group.
The French assistance for the Tutsis will certainly inflame the
Government, which is dominated by the Hutu tribe and had expected the
French, who have come to their aid in the past, to help them defeat
the Tutsi-led rebels.
``We were manipulated,'' said Sgt. Maj. Thierry Prungnaud. ``We thought
the Hutu were the good guys and the victims.''
Already the mood has begun to change in this area, which is now almost
exclusively populated by Hutu. Two days ago, the French flag was
everywhere along the 70 miles of twisting road from Cyangugu to
Bisesero; today, fewer than a dozen were seen. There were almost as
many flags of the country's militant Hutu party, the Coalition for the
Defense of the Republic, whose militia are responsible for much of the
killing of Tutsi, according to human rights organizations.
Countless thousands, most of them Tutsi, have been killed since April,
the start of the most recent outbreak of violence in the four-year
civil war.
Anti-French Sentiment
The increasingly anti-French sentiment was even more palpable around
Gisenyi, 70 miles north of here, said French officials, who
characterized the attitude as not hostile but certainly cool.
A radio station operated by the militant Hutu has reportedly begun
accusing the French of collaborating with the Rwandan Patriotic Front,
the Tutsi-led political and military organization that has opposed the
Government in the civil war. The Front now controls just about all of
the country, except for this southwestern corner, where the French
have concentrated their intervention.
Realizing how difficult it will be not to antagonize the Rwandan
Government, the French landed a unit of soldiers today 30 miles south
of here in Kirambe. The unit will establish a base to provide relief
and protection for the displaced Hutu, said Col. Didier Thibaut, the
commander of the forces protecting the 8,000 Tutsi living in refugee
camps at Nyarushishi.
On Thursday, when the first French troops arrived at Bisesero, some
400 Tutsi came out of hiding. More than 100 of the most seriously
wounded, who had been under constant attack from Government forces for
nearly two weeks, were evacuated on Thursday night.
Today, French military doctors treated scores of others. Leonica, 10
years old, was shot while running last week and has a hole in her
right thigh. She lay on a cot, fed intravenously by a needle in her
thin arm from a bag on a stick.
A French paratrooper stroked her cheek tenderly. They're very brave;
they don't show their pain,
he said.
Before evacuating her, French soldiers unloaded boxes of high protein
biscuits from a helicopter, one of several that landed on the mountain
ridge line during the day. The French military also escorted a truck
of relief food delivered by CARE International.
Since the French arrived, they have been constantly criticized by
international relief organizations for being too partial toward the
Hutu Government. On Thursday, the French delivered 250 boxes of high
protein biscuits to a Hutu village less than a mile up the mountain
from where the Tutsi were being treated today.
Sergeant Major Prungnaud said that local government officials had told
the French that rebels had infiltrated the mountains and that the
civilians themselves were armed.
Col. Marin Gillier, commander of the French Navy Commando Unit four
miles down the mountain from here, declined to say today if any
weapons had been found, but French soldiers said that none had
been. Nor was there evidence of any infiltration, they said.
'People Must See This'
Earlier this week, Colonel Gillier refused to answer any questions
about who was doing the killing in the mountains and whether there
were Tutsi in need of help. I do not wish to get involved in a
political matter
he said.
But today, he urged a British television cameraman to walk through the
mountains and film the corpses. You must go,
he said. People must
see this.
Almost all the 400 Tutsi who came out of hiding on Thursday were
men. It was thought that there were more women, but that they were
still too afraid to come out.
Today, however, there were still very few women. Villagers said most
of them had been killed because they could not run fast enough.
One of the women who did survive was Odette Mukamana, 32. On Monday,
she lost the last surviving member of her family, her 13-year-old
daughter.
Her mother and father, sisters and brothers and other children were
killed over the past two months, as was her husband and all of his
family, she said. The daughter's throat was cut and her legs had been
slashed with a machete, Mrs. Mukamana said.
A few hundred yards away, the body of a small boy lay in a ditch. His
clothes were soaked in blood. Judging by the size of his foot, the
child was about 8 years old. Near his left foot was his severed skull.
It was not an unusual sight. The cornfields and streams of these
mountains are scattered with corpses, many of them women and children,
many decapitated.
