The middle school students in Senegal listened quietly one afternoon this past week as their history teacher told a story most of them knew already.
In 1944, French colonial forces massacred West African soldiers who had returned from France after fighting in World War II, said the teacher, Aminata Diedhiou.
Their school, in the town of Thiaroye, stands near the site of the killings.
Why did the French massacre them, one student asked. How were they killed, wondered another.
“I want to know more,” said Amy Sall, 16.
So does Senegal.
Ahead of the 80th anniversary of what is known as the Thiaroye Massacre, Senegal’s government has pressured France to fully explain one of the most sinister episodes of its colonial rule in Africa.
And Senegal won’t let it go, the latest signal sent by an African government that the relationship with the former colonizer is up for reconsideration.
After President Emmanuel Macron of France last week referred to the events as a “massacre” in a letter addressed to his Senegalese counterpart — the first French president to ever to describe it as such — President Bassirou Diomaye Faye had a blunt answer.
“That is not enough,” Mr. Faye said in an interview with Le Monde. “We still don’t know how many people were killed nor why, how and where they were buried.”
The calls for reparations echo campaigns demanding truth and justice for colonial-era crimes committed across the continent. In the former French colonies of West and Central Africa, where several governments have curtailed ties with France in recent years, few incidents resonate as much as the memory of Thiaroye.
“Thiaroye could be the foundation for a Pan-African consciousness shared by all African countries who have lost citizens in the tragedy,” said Mamadou Diouf, a Senegalese historian and director of Columbia University’s Institute for African Studies.
Mr. Diouf, who was appointed by the Senegalese government this summer to lead a research committee on Thiaroye, called Senegal’s new attitude “indicative of a breakaway, a strong assertion of sovereignty.”
A 15-Second Blood Bath
On the morning of Dec. 1, 1944, French colonial forces gathered hundreds of West African men temporarily stationed at a garrison in Thiaroye, on the outskirts of Dakar, the then-capital of French West Africa.
It was supposed to be their last stop before home: Hailing from a dozen African colonies, the men had fought for France in the war, been detained in Nazi-run camps for years, and were now awaiting financial compensation for years of service.
The money wasn’t coming.
As tensions escalated between French and West African soldiers who had once been brothers in arms, French officers vowed to “bring back order,” according to a French military report written a day before the killings.
They brought machine guns to Thiaroye, two battalions, a tank and other military vehicles to “show so much superiority that the mutineers don’t think about resisting,” the report read.
Around 9:30 a.m., they fired more than 500 rounds of ammunition within 15 seconds, according to archives consulted by Martin Mourre, a French historian.
The first official death toll mentioned 35 West African deaths — an “indispensable surgical operation,” an act of self-defense against armed and aggressive men, claimed the French officer in charge, in a report written days later.
But historians from France and Senegal say the real death toll is likely closer to 400, and that the West African soldiers were not armed.
They argue that discrepancies in military reports and the preparedness of French troops pointed to a premeditated massacre. The lack of information around the identities of the victims and the whereabouts of their remains, are other signs that France tried to cover up a crime, they say.
“Hiding documents was a part of the imperial policy,” Mr. Diouf said. “We have the French version. We need to write our own narrative.”
Keeping ‘Thiaroye’ Alive
While much remains undisclosed about the events of 1944, Thiaroye has permeated Senegal’s public psyche in plays, poems and hip-hop songs. “Camp de Thiaroye,” released in 1988 by the filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, is a classic of Senegalese cinema.
Now, Senegal’s new pro-sovereignty government is making it a political issue.
Dozens of billboards commemorating the 80th anniversary of the massacre have been displayed along Dakar’s main avenues. In Thiaroye this past week, construction workers were renovating a military cemetery, which will be the site of the official commemoration ceremony.
At the middle school where Ms. Diedhiou gathered students, commemorations are held every year: Senegalese soldiers raise the country’s flag in the middle of the playground, surrounded by students donning uniforms similar to those worn in 1944.
“We are happy to pay tribute,” Awa Samateh, 17, said as she sat with half a dozen schoolmates under an orange tree between two lessons. “But it pains us because the white men killed them for no good reason.”
The school was built on the site of the military camp where the West African soldiers were slain. Ms. Diedhiou said she was haunted by the possibility of teaching close to where the victims may have been buried.
The nearby military cemetery contains 35 graves, the official death toll. But many in Senegal suspect that they are empty.
“These graves are a joke,” said Biram Senghor, whose father, Mbap, was killed in 1944. At 86, Mr. Senghor said he had little hope that he would ever learn the whereabouts of his father’s remains.
A Taboo No More
The economic, cultural and political ties between Senegal and France have run deep since Senegal’s independence in 1960.
For the sake of preserving those ties, Senegalese presidents never confronted France about the atrocities committed in Thiaroye, according to historians and intellectuals from both countries.
“Previous governments thought they had to beg France to commemorate,” said Boubacar Boris Diop, a writer and intellectual who has written a play on Thiaroye. “It is changing now.”
France has long maintained that it had given access to all its archives on the killings, but cracks in that assertion have begun to appear. For the 70th anniversary of the killings in 2014, then-President François Hollande said the death toll was more likely 70 — double the toll France had previously acknowledged, but still far below historians’ estimates.
“France isn’t itself when it looks away from events that may have tarnished its image,” Mr. Hollande said.
Last month, Senegalese archivists working for Mr. Diouf’s research group traveled to France to examine all of the archives that could contain information about the killings.
“We will be able to come up with some information that will allow people to ask for reparations,” Mr. Diouf said.
Only truth, President Faye said in his interview with Le Monde, will help Senegal and France move toward a partnership “ridden of painful remnants.” He also called on hundreds of French troops still present in Senegal to leave. In another blow to France’s already-waning military influence in Africa, the government of Chad ended a longstanding defense partnership between the two countries last month.
Mr. Senghor, who was 6 years old in 1944, is still waiting for the financial compensation that France owes his deceased father for his service in France.
Mr. Macron said he wouldn’t travel to Senegal for the commemorations. Whether France will heed Senegal’s requests is also unclear.
While France has under Mr. Macron’s leadership returned looted artworks and acknowledged crimes committed in Algeria and Rwanda, acknowledging responsibility for the Thiaroye killings could fuel calls for reparations in other former colonies.
But, Mr. Senghor said, “If the French want to get well with Africans, they must apologize and pay.”
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