While the film “Tirailleurs”, with actor Omar Sy, was released in theaters this Wednesday, the Senegalese consul put forward the proposal to build a tribute statue in Marseille, mirroring that of the soldiers “Dupont and Demba already existing in Dakar. “The participation of Africans must be recognized,” pleaded the Senegalese consul present at the screening of the film “Tirailleurs” in Marseille.
The film tells the story of Thierno, forcibly recruited in a Senegalese village by the French army in 1917, and his father, who tries to watch over him in the horror of the First World War. They were more than 200,000 soldiers from sub-Saharan Africa (Senegal, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali, etc.), at the time colonized by France, to fight during the Great War and 150,000 during the Second World War, a long forgotten story.
“We want this African participation to be recognized. We are not in victimization, what is important is recognition, ”explained the Senegalese consul in Marseille, Abdourahmane Koita, after the screening of the film at the Les Variétés cinema on Wednesday evening.
A scientific committee constituted
“Many of these African soldiers died so that we are alive today”, he insisted, calling for a statue in Marseille, “long gateway for Africans in France”. For two years, the representative of Senegal, supported by various associations, has pleaded for Marseille to host, in “an accessible and symbolic place”, a monument similar to that of Dakar representing two combatants of the First World War, an African (Demba) and a Frenchman from metropolitan France (Dupont).
A scientific committee has been set up and meetings have taken place with the prefecture, the military governor and the town hall, according to the consul. “In the absence of a statue, we would like at least a stele” in Borély Park, where there is a memorial in tribute to the Americans who died for France, he added.