Key points
- Death toll revised to 300–400, far above official 35
- Researchers accuse France of deliberate cover-up and falsified records
- Report urges France to formally apologise to victims’ families
DAKAR: A new official report has concluded that a 1944 massacre of African troops by French colonial forces in Senegal was both “premeditated” and later “covered up,” with the true death toll far exceeding earlier claims.
While French authorities at the time reported 35 deaths, researchers now estimate that between 300 and 400 West African soldiers were killed at the Thiaroye camp near Dakar after demanding unpaid wages following World War II. The 301-page report, submitted to Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, urges France to formally apologize to the victims’ families and communities, according to AFP
The toll is likely significantly too low, according to the committee of researchers who authored a paper submitted to the Senegalese president on Thursday. They said the “most credible estimates put the figure at 300 to 400” deaths.
The 301-page report, submitted to President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, called on France to “officially express its request for forgiveness to the families, communities and populations from which the riflemen came.”
Around 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.
Unmet demands
Discontent soon mounted over back pay and unmet demands that they be treated on a par with white soldiers.
On December 1, French forces opened fire on them.
According to the committee, which was led by historian Mamadou Diouf, the report “restores” facts that were “deliberately hidden or buried in masses of administrative and military archives and released sparingly.”
“The true death toll of the tragedy is difficult to determine today,” the researchers wrote.
But they said previous reports of around 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, was 300 to 400 deaths.
Meticulously planned
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 said.
“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.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Friday during a trip to Lagos that France was “ready to cooperate with Senegal” on shedding light on the events.
“France is not going to avert its eyes from its own history and has embarked, along with Senegal and a number of other African countries, on the work of remembrance,” Barrot told journalists.
