Senegal commemorates 80th anniversary of French WW2 massacre

Biram Senghor regularly goes to pay his respects at a military cemetery in Thiaroye, a fishing village near Senegal’s capital Dakar, bowing in front of a different grave each time.

The 86-year-old has no way of knowing which grave belongs to his father, M’Bap Senghor, one of likely hundreds of West African riflemen who fought for France during World War II but were killed on Dec. 1, 1944 by the French army after demanding unpaid wages.

In this cemetery where they are supposedly buried, all the graves are anonymous and the exact location of the remains is unknown, as is the number of victims. The true scale and circumstances of the killings remain unclear as Senegal commemorates the 80th anniversary of the massacre on Sunday, threatening to reignite smouldering tensions between France and the former colony.

“I have been fighting to get answers for over 80 years,” says Biram Senghor. “(French President Emmanuel) Macron cannot do what the other French presidents before him did; France has to repent.”

The West Africans were members of the unit called “Tirailleurs Sénégalais,” a corps of colonial infantry in the French Army that fought in both World Wars. According to historians, there were disputes over unpaid wages in the days before the massacre and on Dec. 1, French troops turned on the unarmed African soldiers and shot them dead.

To mark the commemoration the Senegalese Press Agency posted archive video of the riflemen on X.

For decades, French authorities tried to minimise what had happened in Thiaroye. Reports by the French military shortly after the massacre determined that 35 West African soldiers were killed in response to a “mutiny.” Other reports by the French army mention 70 deaths.

But today, many French and Senegalese