A massacre of African World War II riflemen demanding pay for fighting for France in 1944 was premeditated, covered up and its death toll vastly underestimated, according to a paper submitted to the Senegalese president and seen by the news agency AFP.
According to French colonial authorities at the time, at least 35 infantrymen were killed during the massacre at the Thiaroye camp, near the Senegalese capital Dakar.
But a committee of researchers, led by historian Mamadou Diouf, who authored the 301-page report, put that figure at 300 to 400 deaths.
The document, submitted on Thursday to Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, also calls on France to officially request forgiveness, AFP reported.
Below are the report’s main points:
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The report “restores” facts that were “deliberately hidden or buried in masses of administrative and military archives and released sparingly”.
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“The true death toll of the tragedy is difficult to determine today, especially regarding the number of dead and injured”, the researchers wrote. But they said previous reports of some 35 or 70 deaths were “contradictory and patently false” and that “more than 400 riflemen vanished as if they had never existed”. The “most credible” toll, they said, is 300 to 400 deaths.
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The massacre “was intended to convince people that the colonial order could not be undermined by the emancipatory effects of the Second World War”, the report said. For this reason, “the operation was premeditated, meticulously planned and executed thusly in coordinated actions,” it added. If the riflemen had been armed, “they would have defended themselves”, it concluded, adding that “nowhere was the slightest act of resistance mentioned”.
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The report additionally concluded that the killings were not limited to the Thiaroye camp but that some were likely killed at the train station.
Historically, approximately 1,300 soldiers from several countries in West Africa were sent to the Thiaroye camp in November 1944, after being captured by Germany while fighting for France.
Discontent soon mounted over unpaid back pay and unmet demands that they be treated on a par with white soldiers.
On December 1 that year, French forces opened fire on them.
“In the days following the massacre, the French authorities did everything they could to cover up” the killings, the report said. This included altering the riflemen’s departure records from France and arrival records in Dakar, as well as the number of soldiers present in Thiaroye and other facts.
The report also concluded that “some administrative and military archives are inaccessible or inconsistent, while others have disappeared or been falsified”.
Due to the transfer of documents to France, there is a significant absence of source material relating to the massacre in Dakar, where the archives of France’s former West African colonies are concentrated, it said.
While the committee reported that its research benefitted from collaboration in French archives, it said that “several of our questions and requests encountered a wall of smoke and mirrors”.
The researchers recommended requesting that the European Court of Human Rights “declare that the Thiaroye massacre is a massive and clear violation” of the riflemen’s human rights.
It also called on France to “officially express a request for forgiveness to the families, communities and populations of the countries from which the riflemen came”.
