Sauper Filmed Death in Kisangi

An Austrian director Hubert Sauper is a man with a heavy heart: he is talking about the events in Kisangi, Zaire, where he encountered lost refugees and witnessed their death. He can't help criticizing the UN. "Earlier I had made films about people on the run, like gypsies and a circus leader. Refugees were sort of a continuum to this theme. I contacted the UN, and they took me to Zaire with them", Sauper explains.

Refugees who don't exist

According to UN information, there was supposed to be only few hundred refugees in Kisangi area. When Sauper and the UN train set off to their journey, nobody had an idea what was ahead of them. Kisangi Diary tells what happened after the train unexpectedly met thousands of hungry refugees. "On this film, I tried to reach the atmosphere in Kisangi, to show what I saw and felt. I asked myself, what was I doing there. I realized that it was my right and my duty to witness the events with my camera."

Dying people have no lobbyers

The official information concerning thousands of refugees is contradictory. According to Sauper, UN is one of the responsibles for the death of the Kisangi refugees. "UN came to help and assambled all the refugees to camps. This way it was very simple for the rebels to come and shoot everyone. Scattered in the jungle, the hutu refugees were safe from the tutsis."

Sauper describes how the hutus originally had to leave the civil war-torn Rwanda and exile to Zaire. "UN lost these refugees at that point already. So how could the UN now admit that there are masses of people in the Great Lakes, when they have no record of them?"

"The dying people have no voice, no witnesses, no lobbyers in Europe. In the background, the UN has instances which are more interested in Zaire's natural resources than in the refugees. All in all the refugee promblem is very complex, and it is difficult to get a clear picture of it", says Hubert Sauper.