It is a state scandal long passed over in silence. On December 1, 1944, after serving under the tricolor for four years, Senegalese riflemen were killed by the French army. Their exact number is still unknown. This massacre took place on the military camp of Thiaroye, near Dakar. Just back from the Second World War, 1,300 men had just landed there from Brittany. According to La Grande Muette, some of them were executed to put down a mutiny. However, we now know that these victims, buried on the spot without it being known precisely where, demanded their pay. In 2014, in an admittedly expiatory but incomplete speech, François Hollande, then President of the Republic, overlooked the qualification of “mass crime” of the Thiaroye massacre. Natives of the places, Aïcha Euzet, Babacar Dioh and Magui Diop, respectively author, actor and singer, are mobilizing so that this dark page of colonial history does not fall into oblivion. With the historian Martin Mourre, they go to meet Biram Senghor, son of one of the skirmishers. From his father, number 32124, who had been forcibly recruited, his family recovered only a suitcase and a piece of paper stained with blood. By searching the official reports, they confront the murky, sometimes divergent, versions given by the colonial authorities. Would they have fabricated leaders, culprits, evidence? Why do they suggest that 400 skirmishers would have descended on Casablanca if not to minimize the number of soldiers present in the camp on the day of the killing, and therefore the number of victims? How can they speak of 48 dead in one official document, then 70 in another? Marie Thomas-Penette and François-Xavier Destors trace with great accuracy the journey of these skirmishers and the search for truth led by these three artists.
Saturday January 14 at 9 p.m. on Public Sénat. Documentary by Marie Thomas-Penette and François-Xavier Destors (2023). 56 mins. (Available in replay on the site of Public Senate).
