The Thiaroye camp near Dakar was a Senegalese army barracks housing African soldiers called “tirailleurs sénégalais” (Senegalese riflemen). It welcomed men returning from the European front of the second world war, where the riflemen had been held as German prisoners of war while serving on the side of France. They were waiting for their long-overdue back pay and bonuses.
But at dawn on 1 December 1944, they were shot by their own French officers. What should have been a time of celebration became a bloodbath. France sought to downplay or deny the massacre for many years.
In 2024, ahead of the 80th anniversary commemorations of the massacre, Senegal’s Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko appointed a commission to establish the truth of what happened, to ensure proper recognition and reparations for the victims, and to assert Senegal’s sovereignty to write its own history.
Chaired by Professor Mamadou Diouf of Columbia University, one of its tasks was to draft a new report (a white paper) on Thiaroye. This was presented to President Bassirou Diomaye Faye on 17 October 2025.
Martin Mourre, a historian and anthropologist specialising in colonial armies, has studied this issue and explains what the new report brings to light and why Thiaroye remains so sensitive.
What happened at Thiaroye?
On 21 November 1944, the first group of former prisoners of war arrived at the Thiaroye camp to be demobilised. They were owed substantial sums, mainly the back pay accumulated during their captivity.
The French army refused to give them what they were owed, even though the funds were reportedly available in Dakar.
On 27 November, tensions escalated, prompting the intervention of a senior officer. He planned a repression operation that, on 1 December, turned into a massacre.
Read more: The time has come for France to own up to the massacre of its own troops in Senegal
Even though a number of questions remain unanswered, the event is fairly well documented. The main debate revived by the new report and echoed in the media focuses on two issues: the death toll and the burial site of the victims.
Regarding the death toll, one may rely on a literal reading of the archives, which consistently report 35 deaths (or 70 in one officer’s report, phrased in a particularly obscure way).
On this point, the white paper does not appear to go further than previous research, which supports a higher estimate of 300 to 400 deaths.
How has France responded to the Thiaroye issue over the years?
France actively sought to erase the events at Thiaroye. In the weeks following the tragedy, French officials declared, according to archival records, that adequate measures must be taken to hide these hours of madness. The language reveals a deliberate effort to downplay and conceal the atrocity.
This continued long after independence in 1960. One of the most infamous examples is the censorship of the acclaimed film The Camp at Thiaroye by Senegalese filmmakers Ousmane Sembène and Thierno Faty Sow, which failed to find distributors in France when it was released.
However, things began to change in the 2000s, particularly when President Abdoulaye Wade organised official commemorations of the massacre. For the first time, a special French ambassador attending the commemoration acknowledged the colonial army’s responsibility for the tragedy.
Read more: Ousmane Sembène at 100: a tribute to Senegal's 'father of African cinema'
A more prominent gesture came in 2014 when President François Hollande visited the military cemetery. He delivered a speech and handed over a batch of archives to Senegalese President Macky Sall. He claimed – falsely, as it later turned out – that these represented all the documents France possessed on the massacre.
These archives were not available for analysis in Senegal until an executive order was issued by President Bassirou Diomaye Faye in 2024. The reason for the decade-long blockade was never adequately explained.
In 2024, President Emmanuel Macron went further than his predecessor by officially recognising events at Thiaroye as “a massacre”. A word his predecessor had avoided. Macron made this statement in a letter to Faye.
What new information does the report provide?
The main new element presented in the white paper is the initial outcome of archaeological excavations of the burial site, carried out by a team from Dakar’s Cheikh Anta Diop University. They have so far uncovered the remains of seven individuals.
All indications are that these men were victims of the massacre. Investigators highlighted the rushed and irregular nature of the graves and the burials, with bodies still dressed in military uniforms.
French administrative records had offered no answers about where or how the victims were laid to rest. This left the question of potential mass graves unresolved and shrouded in uncertainty.
These new findings from the report verify that victims were buried at this site. They also challenge official French narratives. The investigation continues. The archaeological team plans to expand their search, believing that more remains may lie hidden across the site.
What momentum led to the search at the grave site?
The issue of excavations of this site has a longer history. In 2017, several pan-African organisations urged Senegalese authorities to carry out such searches at Thiaroye. Among them was the party of Ousmane Sonko, today prime minister of Senegal but then a member of parliament.
Ten years earlier, during the construction of a highway crossing part of the military camp, historian Cheikh Faty Faye had already raised the issue publicly. Faye, who died in 2021, had worked on Thiaroye since the 1970s. He was part of a tradition of activist-scholars connected to pan-Africanist movements.
Through decades of commemoration and organising, these groups transformed the cemetery into a site of collective memory.
Read more: David Diop: his haunting account of a Senegalese soldier that won the Booker prize
The cemetery holds 202 graves, roughly 30 of which stand apart from the others. To my knowledge, no scientific work has traced its origins, but it likely dates back to the first world war, when the Thiaroye camp was built.
It’s located about 1km from the camp’s main entrance. It served as the burial ground for west African riflemen from Senegal and numerous other French colonial territories who died during training. Their remains were never repatriated.
If future research confirms that the recently discovered bodies belong to the men killed on 1 December, it would be an important step towards clarifying the death toll.
What else is important in this report?
While the white paper dedicates considerable attention to the death toll, it also signals an interest in recovering the individual life stories of the Thiaroye riflemen.
Yet in my view, a crucial question remains unaddressed: the distinctly colonial character of the violence itself.
This is a form of violence inherent to the colonial context, marked by racialisation, a sense of impunity, and the distance between the colony and mainland France.
The challenge today is no longer just to document what happened at Thiaroye. It is ensure that this history is passed on to future generations. Integrating it into school curricula – anchored in rigorous scholarly work – shows how understanding the past illuminates the present and helps build a collective memory on solid foundations.
Martin Mourre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
