The Porte de Clignancourt, a popular crossroads in the north of Paris, will become the “Senegalese Tirailleurs Square” in tribute to the African soldiers who fought for France during the World Wars, the Paris Council decided unanimously on Friday. “The courageous history of these men must be passed on”, declared Laurence Patrice, Deputy (PCF) in Memory of Mayor Anne Hidalgo.
Created by Napoleon III in 1857 in Senegal, hence its name, this infantry corps then expanded in its recruitment to men from other regions of West and Central Africa conquered by France at the end of the 19th century. century. “This place will pay tribute to all of them,” said Laurence Patrice.
“France behaved very badly”
Among the 134,000 skirmishers who fought against Germany during the First World War, “approximately 30,000 of them are killed or are declared missing”, underlines the town hall of Paris. About 175,000 Africans then fought to liberate France during World War II, especially during the landing of Provence.
But “France behaved badly, very badly” towards them, recalled the adviser (PCF) Raphaëlle Primet. “It erased the images of victory these soldiers from the colonies, it penned them up, mistreated and even massacred as in Thiaroye”, near Dakar, where, in December 1944, several dozen of them died, repressed by the ‘French army.
Salaries inferior to French soldiers
“The end of the Senegalese infantry corps” at the beginning of the 1960s, at the end of the wars of independence during which some of them were still fighting for France, “was bitter”, added Rudolph Granier (LR). “They did not receive the recognition they were due. “These men harbor a form of grudge […], incomprehension and sometimes even anger ”because of a“ retirement lower than their French compatriots ”or even“ the difficulty of obtaining visas for their descendants ”, underlined Fatoumata Koné (EELV).
Several monuments in homage to African soldiers exist in France, notably in Provence, Champagne, Aquitaine or Ile-d’Yeu, theaters of their intervention or their disappearance. At the beginning of September, the city of Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, in Seine-Saint-Denis, inaugurated a place of African Tirailleurs.