Senegal demands answers as the country commemorates 80th anniversary of Thiaroye massacre

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00:00Hello to you, Kaitlin.

00:01Tell us about today's commemorations and where you are.

00:04Hi, Will, yes, I'm at Tiurai Cemetery, which is a colonial cemetery just on the outskirts

00:11of Dhaka.

00:12And as you can hear, there are sirens as heads of state and President Diomafai arrive at

00:18the ceremony for the commemorations of the 80th anniversary.

00:20As you can see behind me, locals have lined up to see who's coming to lay wreaths and

00:26lay flowers and pay their respects to the fallen soldiers, as you said, in 1944.

00:33The Senegalese Tireye, who are a West African infantry made up of around 16 different countries,

00:40had served with the French army in the fight against the Nazis.

00:44They had repatriated back home here to West Africa.

00:47They were at the Camp Tiurai, which is just up the road from here, to collect their pensions,

00:52their remittances for their work.

00:55And what then ensued was that the French colonial troops opened fire and people were

01:01killed.

01:02Now, how many is the question?

01:0335 is what the official records say, but historians actually believe the number is 100.

01:09And so it's unclear how many are being honored here today and what the fanfare really means.

01:15But essentially, there are people here gathering to pay their respects for this unspoken and

01:20dark chapter in French colonial history.

01:23Yeah.

01:24So a lot of unknowns there.

01:25Now, on Thursday, the French president became the first to officially recognize the killings

01:31as a massacre.

01:33How did that go over there?

01:34Was that enough recognition?

01:36Yeah.

01:37As you said, if we just take things back a few years, it was only in 2014 that France

01:43even acknowledged that the event happened, and that was, you know, 10 years ago.

01:47As you said, Macron called it a massacre, which was an important moment here in Senegal,

01:52given that gives some agency to France as to what they did and how many people were

01:57slaughtered essentially.

01:59But here in Senegal, the reaction has been quite mixed, particularly from the president

02:02who said that things did not go far enough, that there still needs to be clarity on how

02:07many people were killed, where they were killed, how they were killed, and also where they're

02:11buried.

02:12Particularly for people here in Senegal, their families have not been able to get that closure.

02:16There are some sons of fathers who were killed who've been here in the capital over the past

02:21few weeks, demanding answers and demanding recognition.

02:24Over the summer, the government set up a new inquiry commission to look into things, to

02:29find out the facts.

02:30And a group of those people actually headed to Paris earlier this year to go through the

02:35archives to have more information about what unfolded on this day 80 years ago.

02:40The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barraud, is supposed to be here today as, you know,

02:45the ex-colonial power is trying to repair decades-old wounds, but there's still a bit

02:51of tension when it comes to how the massacre is seen.

02:54There are pop songs, there are poems, there are stories about what happened, but even

02:58young people are not fully educated today.

03:01So today's really about a moment about remembering, but also reconciling a very difficult past

03:06with France.

03:07All right, Caitlin, thank you very much.

03:09Caitlin Kelly reporting.

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