Senegal and France commemorate together the 80th anniversary of the massacre committed by French gendarmes in Thiaroye

Macron recognizes for the first time as a “massacre” the murders of dozens of Senegalese riflemen who demanded back payments for the war

Dec. 1 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The president of Senegal, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, and the French Foreign Minister, Jean Noël Barrot, together commemorated this Sunday a dark episode of the French colonial era in the African country: the massacre in 1944 in the town of Thiaroye of dozens of Senegalese riflemen who ended up shot by French gendarmes when they asked for the money they were owed for fighting against Nazi Germany.

The death toll has varied since then, but today it is estimated that between 35 and 70 ‘tiralleurs’ succumbed to the gendarmes’ gunfire.

This past Thursday, in a letter to his Senegalese counterpart, the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, described what happened as a “massacre”, for the first time and officially by the French side. “It is important to identify, to the extent possible, the causes and events that led to this tragedy. Taking into account the relationships of friendship and brotherhood, our shared history and our desire to build a harmonious future, we owe each other the truth and justice,” said the president.

In his speech to the Senegalese people, Minister Barrot echoed the same idea: “There is no appeasement without justice and no justice without truth,” reports the DakarActu news portal, while the Senegalese president announced during the ceremony a series of initiatives to guarantee that the event will endure in the national memory.

In addition to a monument in honor of the fallen, a documentation and research center dedicated to the riflemen will be built to preserve the memory and collect archives, testimonies and stories of what happened, and the history of the massacre will become part of the programs lessons so that “future generations grow up with a deeper understanding of this episode from our past.

From now on, in addition, December 1 will be a day of national remembrance in memory of the massacred ‘tiralleurs’.