Mamadou Diouf. YANN LEGENDRE
On the morning of December 1, 1944, the French army, having mobilized 1,200 soldiers and positioned tanks around the Thiaroye camp near Dakar, opened fire on the Senegalese tirailleurs stationed there. Their crime? Demanding the same pay as the soldiers in the French army alongside whom they had fought during World War II.
The official death toll of what was labeled a “mutiny” stood at 35. In 2012, responding to African outrage and protests, France, under President François Hollande, reclassified the event as a “bloody repression” and, in 2014, revised the number of deaths to 70.
A few years later, in 2021, Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian acknowledged the existence of three mass graves, though without specifying their locations. And in 2024, President Emmanuel Macron, in a letter to his Senegalese counterpart Bassirou Diomaye Faye, ultimately recognized the “massacre,” while French historians such as Armelle Mabon, author of Le Massacre de Thiaroye (“The Massacre of Thiaroye”), have referred to a “state cover-up” concealing the disappearance of between 300 and 400 tirailleurs.
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