Launched in mid-May in Bangui, the film Tourist is now available on Russian broadcast platforms. Its goal: to praise the Russian intervention in the CAR and the “instructors” sent by Moscow to support President Faustin-Archange Touadéra against the rebels of the CPC (Coalition of Patriots for Change). A film halfway between fiction, reality and propaganda, which would be funded directly by the Wagner group according to the Russian press, and which ignores the abuses for which these mercenaries are accused.
Bloody clashes, rifles, liberating heroes and hordes of bloodthirsty rebels: The tourist, shot like a major American film, respects all codes of war film. The operation takes place in the Central African Republic and borrows from recent history, when the uprising threatened to seize Bangui, just before the presidential election in December last year. On the way, these rebels will collide to the presence of Russian forces coming as reinforcements. “The Russians, but they only train the local army!” And they are only 200 “, minimizes in the film one of the rebels’ accomplices. “The Russians know how to fight, and they are doing well!” Retreats a mysterious “consultant” visible French, who is portrayed as a cahoots with the rebels and very worried about the presence of these Russian “instructors” together with the regular army.
“Thanks to Russia!“
The film will prove him right, as a handful of these “directors” alone manage to cut dozens of Chadian rebels and mercenaries – they only regret one wounded in its ranks: the famous “tourist”, the name of the hero who gives the title to the film. The term “tourist” is used in Russian to denote a “beginner” in battle. “Americans are fighting for democracy, we are fighting for justice,” said one of his comrades at his bedside.
The epilogue takes place in Moscow where our “tourist” returned to Russia and watched TV, a report devoted to the situation in CAR. “Today was the inauguration of President Faustin-Archange Touadéra (sic),” explains the reporter, whose voice drowns out the pro-Russian slogans of Bangui residents. “Peace reigns in the capital, thanks to Russia!” Finishes the enthusiastic journalist.
At the opening of the film, a vote already set the tone: “Since the independence of the Central African Republic in 1960, wars and bloody conflicts, driven by various armed groups, have virtually ceased. For the first time in 2021, we managed to put a stop to it. Dedicated to the liberating heroes of Central Africa, Central African defenders and Russian soldiers. ”
If the plot sticks to current events, “the presentation of events is very selective and biased, in order to hero the figure of the mercenary”, emphasizes the researcher Maxime Audinet, author of a dissertation on Russian influence.
Locked communication
Because if the movie Tourist does not mention the role played by the Wagner Group in the reconquest of Central African territory, all experts in the field will without difficulty have recognized these white warriors without insignia and the masked face, presented by Moscow as “instructors”, but qualified as mercenaries by a UN working group. According to the Russian press, it is even the oligarch Yevgeny Prigojine, alleged manager of Wagner, who financed everything. It was not possible to officially confirm, as all communication around the film is carefully locked – RFI made several interview requests with the producer without success.
However, there are no clues. The few interviews given to the press were all given to the media reporting to the Ria Fan news agency, also linked to the Russian oligarch. One of the actors in the film is none other than Seth Wiredu, alias Mr. Amara “known, reminiscent of Maxime Audinet, for directing EBLA, a magic factory in Ghana, active upstream of the US presidential election”, and linked according to CNN and the agency Graphika, at Internet Research Agency (IRA), founded by the same Evgeni Prigojine. Several IRA employees have also been placed under sanctions by the US Treasury.
The independent Russian press website Meduza also interviewed several former members of Wagner who confirm the role played by the paramilitary company in the film. According to these sources, several of the actors shown on screen are mercenaries themselves, and some of the material used in the film is owned by the paramilitary company. The film was shot in the country in the middle of the crisis, partly in real military camps or near the fighting.
Advocates of the embargo
Fiction or reality: in Touriste, the ambiguity between the two is pushed to its limit. This blurring of lines allows directors to legitimize on screen, including what the official Russian discourse continues to deny: the intervention of these “Russian instructors” directly in combat.
“Your task here is solely to train the soldiers from the local army, Faca (…) You have all received a weapon, but you can only use it in case of threat of death”, insists a trainer in “address the new recruits at the beginning of the film. “These monsters screw up civilians and our hands are tied,” annoyed another director a few minutes later, while the rebels threatened to take Bangui.
In the following scene, the Central African head of state, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, loses his temper on the screen against Minusca: “Seven years ago, when the rebels took the capital, the peacekeepers did not help. They are hardly helping us now. “Before I decide, ‘I go to my friends to ask for their help.’ Moments later, this time the Russians are fully engaged in battle. And here, in some dialogues – under the protection of fiction – the mercenaries motivated directly on the screen, often in the front line.
“Russian instructors strictly follow the provisions of the UN Security Council resolution. In this film, all the inconsistencies with the resolution about RCA were an artistic fiction ”, was also careful to indicate on the screen the directors in the introduction to the film. And this, even though the Russian embassy in the country presented the film on social networks as a “documentary” at the time of the screening in Bangui.
“Legitimize Russian involvement in Africa”
For Maxime Audinet, these obvious contradictions testify in the speech that one should not perceive the Russian influence as a vertical and monolithic activity. It is not only in the field that the line between conventional and unconventional actors is blurred. “But on arrival, all these actors, each in his own place, try to legitimize Moscow’s action,” the researcher continues. They have a superior discourse which is Russia’s re-engagement in Africa. It is the same speech delivered at the first Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi 2019, which enables Russia to present itself as a weak, unconditional partner, acting in a pragmatic way to protect the regimes in place. without the need for democratization. In short, an image that competes with the Western powers, especially the former colonial powers. ”
Minusca’s wait-and-see attitude, the savagery of the rebels, the cooperation of France and the weakness of the national army whose troops abandoned the fight on screen: all the key elements of the Russian story of its intervention in the Central African Republic thus develop during the hour and a half. “It fears that there is an embargo on the arms,” thus launching one of the protagonists, and reiterates the call of Russian diplomacy to get the total amount. lifting of this embargo.
Unsurprisingly, Tourist also ignores the abuse attributed to these mercenaries, or so implicitly, to counteract them: “No sexual relationship with everything that is local, even fauna and flora”, launches at the beginning of the film one of the officials to new recruits, although allegations of sexual violence weigh against them.
Difficulties in recruiting
Asked about the security group’s motives for filming this film, one of the interlocutors on the Russian website Meduza puts forward a hypothesis: Wagner would have decided to fund Tourist to restore his image, injured by the abuses attributed to him in several operating theaters (in CAR, but also in Syria where Russian mercenaries are accused of torturing a deserter to death).
But researcher Mark Galeotti, in the columns of the Moscow Times, wonders if it is not rather a type of disguised recruitment campaign, aimed at the Russian public … According to the British expert, the Wagner group has increasing difficulty in recruiting quality recruiters to send them to the field. In fact, the film ends with a picture, of the protagonist who decides to re-engage and return to play the “instructors” in CAR. “Central Africa is a country full of opportunities”, had launched, premonitiously, and as a welcome, their head of recruiting newcomers in Bangui.
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