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Is France guilty of "amnesia" with regard to the role of African troops who fought during the First World War? The organizers of an exhibition on colonial fighters near Paris think so.
A collection of photos has been presented since mid-October at the town hall of Bondy, a multiracial suburb of the French capital known for hosting the star of French football Kylian Mbappe.
Many inhabitants of the region come from countries that have provided hundreds of thousands of men to the war struggle in France: Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali or Morocco.
"We are stunned by the reactions that sound like:" We had no idea of that, "said Naima Yahi, historian and director of Remembeur, the NGO behind the series whose name plays on the French slang of someone of North African descent. .
"There is a kind of amnesia" in France, she added. "We closed the book on colonization at the end of the empire, but we also closed the memorial dimension and we barely passed on this shared story."
French President Emmanuel Macron will speak on Tuesday at a ceremony that will pay tribute to African troops, often called "Senegalese riflemen", or riflemen, even though they came from all over Africa. l & # 39; West.
For the inauguration of a new monument in the city of Reims, he will be joined by Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, whose great-grandfather beat him and died during of the battle of Verdun in eastern France and whose body was never found.
– Facing the French colonial past –
The role of the approximately 200,000 black troops used by France remains one of many painful aspects of the country's colonial history, which has left deep resentment in Africa.
Macron, the first French president born after the post-Empire era, continued the efforts of his predecessors to progressively tackle the injustices of French colonial rule, which he had previously termed "crime." against humanity ".
In September, he acknowledged the abuses committed by French troops during the struggle for the independence of Algeria and expressed the hope of new relations between Paris and its former colonies, so often weighed down by the burden of history.
"It's the first time we are witnessing a tribute at this level, and what's more with an African head of state," French historian Julien Fargettas told AFP. , author of several books on colonial troops.
The history of African troops during the Great War is essentially a story of exploitation and suffering, like their European counterparts who were sent en masse by commanders on the Western Front.
But most Africans were forcibly recruited when French tactics became coercive in 1915 and 1916 – sparking local riots – and then duplicated from 1917, when men were promised benefits that would not never materialized.
Africans were also urged to act on their own continent by France, Britain, and Germany as the European powers competed for the dominions created at a notorious 1885 Berlin conference.
– & # 39; Unequal treatment & # 39; –
For those who are sent to France, once they have survived the boat trip, they are then launched into a war that they neither understand nor prepare.
"You have to imagine the shock for the men who came from some of the most isolated regions of Africa and who are then plunged into a modern industrial war in the West," said Fargettas.
Combat mortality rates have been controversial for years, but according to Fargettas, there is no evidence to support the idea of "cannon fodder". According to him, about 22 to 25% of the dead died, a level comparable to that of Europeans.
But out of the battlefield, thousands of other people perished in the freezing cold of European winters or in a series of diseases for which their immune system was unprepared.
Mor Ndao, a history professor at the University Cheikh Anta Diop of the Senegalese capital, Dakar, said that he felt that France had never "sufficiently recognized the role and the role of the community. The importance of skirmishers ".
"Their treatment is unequal compared to their French and European arms brothers," he said.
The issue of military pensions – which were much lower for African fighters and unadjusted for decades – continues to rage, as are passports that have often been promised but rarely issued.
Yahi de Remembeur thinks that we need to deepen the research on the role of colonial troops in France and that we should teach more in French schools at this time of increasing tensions on race and immigration .
"It is important for the children and grandchildren of immigrants, but also for the French in general," she said. "We must reinvent our national narrative."
French President Emmanuel Macron and his Malian counterpart Ibrahim Boubacar Keita will inaugurate this monument to African troops during the First World War on Tuesday in Reims
Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita kisses Frenchman Emmanuel Macron in July
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