Posted to the web December 14, 2006
By Chris Mupenzi
Kigali
The Mucyo Commission on the role of French in the 1994 genocide heard yesterday that French soldiers raped Tutsi women and smuggled opium among other social ills.
According to a witness dubbed No.3, the French also appointed the Burgomasters in Zone Turquoise and, supplied and trained them in handling arms. Witness No.3 also said the killers were given fuel to ease their work, while their mentors uprooted opium plantations in Nyungwe forest and killed people in an attempt to destroy evidence.
"Opium growing and smuggling is a trade that involved and closely linked President Françoise Mitterrand's and Habyarimana's families; particularly Mitterrand's son Jean-Christophe and Habyarimana's son," Witness No. 3 told the Commission.
The witness, who testified in camera also, gave gory details of how, after intoxication with alcoholic beverages, the French soldiers repeatedly raped her and her friends in Nyarushishi between June and October 1994.
"They came to our camp and screened nice-looking girls; including I; they gave us beers and cigarettes after which they would force us into sex," she said.
Her revelation was corroborated by among others Witnesses 1 and 6, all long serving Burgomasters in the former Gikongoro and Cyangugu prefectures, respectively.
Witness No1 revealed that he witnessed French soldiers raping Tutsi girls in trenches in Murambi, in the former Gikongoro prefecture.
About the opium growing and smuggling, Witness No. 6 said he was told by the then Burgomaster of Mudasomwa Commune Emmanuel Nteziryayo, that French soldiers had killed and dumped an agriculturalist charged with opium plantations in the Nyungwe forest.
Witness No.6 also added that the French smuggled opium to Kenya, the Central African Republic and Europe.
"As a Burgomaster, I was one of the people who had access to information. Even minister Ntagerura was one of the people in my Commune and used to share with me some important information. For example, he told me it was on the advice of the French that Bagosora was made a Director of Cabinet in the Ministry of Defence, Witness No.6 told the Commission.
Meanwhile, Witness No.2 told of her ordeal in a French Military Camp at SOS in Gikongoro (Zone Turquoise) carried out under the supervision of a French military officer.
"The French soldiers who had taken me to the camp in the name of saving me watched as their Hutu employee raped me and as I tried to escape from the rapist, a French soldier, about twenty years joined the fray, undressed and raped me," she said.
Testimonies continue.
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