French massacre of WWII African riflemen ‘premeditated’, covered up: Report

According to a paper presented to the president of Senegal and seen by the news agency AFP, the massacre of African World War II riflemen demanding pay for their service to France in 1944 was planned, covered up, and the death toll was significantly underestimated.

At least 35 infantrymen were killed in the massacre at the Thiaroye camp, close to Dakar, according to French colonial authorities at the time.

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However, a committee of researchers led by historian Mamadou Diouf, who wrote the 301-page report, estimated 300 to 400 deaths.

According to AFP reports, the document also urges France to officially request forgiveness in a letter sent on Thursday to Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye.

The main points of the report are as follows:

• Facts that were “deliberately hidden or buried in masses of administrative and military archives and sparingly released” are “restored” by the report.
• The researchers wrote that it is difficult to estimate the actual death toll from the tragedy today, particularly given the number of victims and injured. However, they claimed that “more than 400 riflemen vanished as if they had never existed” and that previous reports of 35 or 70 deaths were “contradictory and patently false.” According to them, 300 to 400 deaths are the “most credible” death toll.
• According to the report, the massacre “was intended to persuade people that the colonial order could not be undermined by the Second World War’s emancipatory effects.” For this reason, it continued, “the operation was planned, meticulously executed, and carried out in coordinated actions.” The riflemen would have defended themselves if they had been armed, it said, adding that “nowhere was the slightest act of resistance mentioned.”
• Additionally, the report came to the conclusion that some of the killings took place at the train station while others occurred at the Thiaroye camp.

In November 1944, after being captured by Germany while fighting for France, approximately 1,300 soldiers from various West African nations were dispatched to the Thiaroye camp.

Unsatisfaction with unpaid back pay and unsatisfactory demands for treatment of the same level as white soldiers quickly rose.

French forces opened fire on them on December 1 of that year.

According to the report, “the French authorities did everything possible to cover up” the killings in the days immediately following the massacre.” This included altering the riflemen’s records for arrival and departure from France, the soldiers’ numbers in Thiaroye, and other details.

Additionally, according to the report, “some administrative and military archives are inaccessible or inconsistent, while others have vanished or been falsified.”

There is a significant lack of source material related to the massacre in Dakar, where the archives of France’s former West African colonies are concentrated, according to the report.

The committee claimed that its research had been aided by French archives’ collaboration, but that “several of our questions and requests encountered a wall of smoke and mirrors.”

The researchers suggested that the European Court of Human Rights “declare that the Thiaroye massacre is a massive and obvious violation” of the riflemen’s human rights.