The Thiaroye massacre was the massacre of a number of French West African troops, shot by French forceson the night of 30 November to 1 December 1944. West African volunteers and conscripts of the Tirailleurs Sénégalais units of the French army mutinied against poor conditions and revocation of pay at the Thiaroye camp, on the outskirts of Dakar, Senegal.
Background
As colonial subjects, tirailleurs were not awarded the same pensions as their French fellow soldiers during and after World War II, pensions that had been promised to them at the beginning of the war. The pensions for veterans of both races were calculated on the basis of living costs in their countries of birth, supposedly lower in colonies than in metropolitan France. These soldiers additionally claimed they were owed back pay due to an order issued by the Minister of Colonies authorizing benefits for ex-prisoners of war from West Africa, which both fell short of the benefits given to French prisoners of war and was in any case not implemented. This discrimination led to a mutiny by about 1,300 Senegalese tirailleurs at Camp Thiaroye on 30 November 1944. The tirailleurs involved were actually from Guinea, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Chad, Benin, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Central African Republic, and Togo. The former prisoners of war had been repatriated to West Africa and placed in a holding camp awaiting discharge. They demonstrated in protest against the failure of the French authorities to pay salary arrears and discharge allowances. The immediate grievance was the unfavorable exchange rate applied to currency brought back by the repatriated soldiers from France. A French general, briefly held by the tirailleurs, promised to have the rate changed to a par with that applicable to white veterans.
Suppression
Early the following morning French soldiers guarding the camp opened fire killing between thirty-five and seventy African soldiers. A detailed French-language account of the massacre states that 24 of the former prisoners were killed outright and eleven subsequently died of their wounds However, war veterans claim that over 300 of the black African soldiers were killed while the French only claim 35 deaths. The French provisional government of Charles de Gaulle, concerned at the impact of the Thiaroye incident on still-serving tirailleurs, acted quickly to ensure that claims for back pay and other monies owing were settled.
Aftermath
In March 1945 a military tribunal sentenced some of the survivors to ten years in prison. Five of the prisoners died in detention. As President Vincent Auriol visited Senegal in March 1947, the prisoners where released, but the didn't receive their veteran pension. After the war ended, the French argued that the tirailleurs were particularly prone to revolt. The French based this claim on the notion that German soldiers, in an attempt to undermine the loyalty of France’s colonial subjects in Africa, had given the tirailleurs favored treatment as prisoners of war. This ostensibly good treatment of tirailleurs in prisoner of war camps was not, however, based in fact. Furthermore, there is no mention of the Thiaroye Massacre in any of France's history books taught in school. Despite the complications of the massacre, France still currently has strong policial and military connections with Senegal which could explain why the film was so poorly received and censored in France. With a new generation of French leadership, they want to confront the difficulty of the past and were even planning on building an exhibition on the incident that would travel through many of the former French colonies in Western Africa in 2013. While the incident is merely mentioned, there is a military cemetery in Senegal that is unkept and receives no visitors. The cemetery holds the unmarked mass graves of the fallen French soldiers. The Senegalese army prevents any film or photography of the cemetery, and many locals consider the cemetery to be haunted due to the fallen French soldiers still awaiting the vengeance of their honor.
In art and literature
Senegalese author and filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, directed a film, Camp de Thiaroye, documenting the events leading up to the Thiaroye massacre, as well as the massacre itself. The film is considered historical fiction, as the characters are not necessarily based on actual tirailleurs who were killed. The film received positive reviews at the time it was released and continues to be heralded by scholars as an important historical documentation of the Thiaroye massacre. The movie was banned in France for over a decade. Guinean writer Fodéba Keïta wrote and staged the narrative poem Aube africaine as a theatre-ballet based on the massacre. In African Dawn, a young man called Naman complies with the French colonial rulers by fighting in the French Army only to be killed in Thiaroye. His works were banned in French Africa as he was considered radical and anticolonial.
