Revisiting Thiaroye massacre: French photographer unveils forgotten history Atrocities of French colonisers in Senegal 

An article, dedicated to the massacre committed by French forces against Senegalese soldiers during World War II has been published on the website of Radio France Internationale (RFI), Caliber.Az reprints the article.

Twenty years ago, French photographer Yves Monteil was driving in Senegal when he passed a military cemetery in Thiaroye, in the suburbs of Dakar. Friends told him it was the burial site of Senegalese soldiers massacred by the French army during the Second World War, shot for demanding unpaid wages. The story stuck with Monteil, and in 2020 he picked up his camera and began digging into the archives. 

The massacre at Thiaroye took place on December 1, 1944, when French colonial troops opened fire on West African soldiers who had just returned from Europe, where they had been fighting for France. 

The tirailleurs sénégalais (Senegalese riflemen), as they were known, had been promised the same pay and pensions as their French counterparts.    When they assembled peacefully to demand their rightful compensation, they were met with gunfire. The exact death toll remains disputed: official French accounts initially claimed only 35 casualties, while other estimates suggest more than 300 were killed. 

Before turning his lens on Thiaroye, Monteil had examined policing methods in France. He observed parallels between contemporary law enforcement tactics and the operations once carried out in Africa.  "During my research, I made the connection between modern law enforcement and its colonial heritage," he told RFI.  Documenting Thiaroye through images became the natural next step for the photographer, in tribute to the Senegalese soldiers whose story has been largely forgotten. 

Recreating the past 

The result is the book Fecci Worma, which means "High Treason" in the Wolof language.   Over three years, Monteil travelled between France and Senegal, retracing the events. He visited Morlaix, on the Brittany coast, where the discharged Senegalese soldiers had boarded a ship home, and Thiaroye, where they were killed. 

Monteil timed his photographs to recreate the past – shooting in the early morning in Morlaix to mirror the soft light when the soldiers departed.  He also shot portraits of descendants of the soldiers, as well as the historians and artists who have studied the massacre, and the caretaker of Thiaroye’s military cemetery.  Alongside his photographs, Monteil has used infographics and maps to bring complex historical data to life. Using French military archives, he also reconstructed the layout of the Thiaroye transit camp, which served as a temporary home to demobilised soldiers following their service.  

By overlaying contemporary aerial images on historical maps, he revealed a geography that had been buried by time.   "A black circle surrounded the site of the massacre, on military reports from that time," he explained. His maps highlight where the soldiers' barracks stood and where the French army entered the camp.  These visual reconstructions could prove useful for archaeologists. In February, the Senegalese government announced plans for excavations, in order to determine the true number of soldiers killed.  

A hidden history 

In a single, striking image, one of Monteil’s infographics lays bare the conflicting figures reported over the past 60 years.  His research draws on diverse sources: French public archives, newspaper clippings, the work of Senegalese filmmaker Mansour Kébé from the 1980s, as well as testimonies from military personnel, historians and the children of the soldiers. 

French historian Armelle Mabon, a specialist in the Thiaroye massacre, provided access to her own archives, which expose contradictions and omissions in the French state's version of events. "She is a historian, a detective, a researcher. She brings a different sensitivity and vision of things – a book was missing," Monteil says of Mabon.  For both the photographer and the historian, uncovering the truth about Thiaroye remains an unfinished mission – and a crucial one because the official record still contains significant gaps, 80 years on. "There are still obstructions from the French state and we clearly show them in this book," Monteil says.   Among the grey areas is the list of repatriated soldiers, the exact mapping of where the soldiers are buried and archives that appear deliberately truncated. 

Monteil notes with frustration that a French parliamentary commission, established to investigate the massacre, ultimately produced no findings.  For his book project, he bypassed traditional publishing houses in favour of crowdfunding, a choice he says ensured complete editorial independence. "The Thiaroye massacre would not have interested many publishers."

By Naila Huseynova