The presidents of France and Mali on Tuesday paid tribute to the role played by African troops who fought for France during World War I.
French President Emmanuel Macron and Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita attended a ceremony in Reims to pay joint tribute to the soldiers.
“Today, we honor heroes,” said Keita, whose great-grandfather fought and died in the Battle of Verdun nearby and whose body was never found.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“The nearly 200,000 soldiers who fought day and night, who fought for France and for themselves too, for justice and liberty,” he said.
These “implacable” fighters had given their blood for world peace, he said.
Macron did not speak during the ceremony, but in a tweet on Tuesday, he said that as well as the French soldiers, it was “the youth of the whole world who fell 100 years ago in villages whose names they did not know.”
They included “200,000 African soldiers from the colonies,” he said.
The two presidents together laid wreaths at the Parc Champagne memorial and inaugurated a monument in memory of the African troops.
The event was part of a series of ceremonies this week to mark the centenary of the end of the war.
The African troops were often referred to as “Senegalese tirailleurs,” or riflemen, even though they were drawn from all over West Africa.
However, France has long been accused of having neglected their contribution to the conflict.
The role of the estimated 200,000 African troops used by France remains one of many painful aspects of the nation’s colonial history, which left deep resentment in Africa.
Macron, the first French president born in the post-empire era, has continued efforts by his predecessors to gradually address the injustices of France’s colonial rule, which he once called “a crime against humanity.”
In September, he acknowledged abuses by French troops during Algeria’s fight for independence, and has expressed hopes for new relationships between Paris and its former colonies, so often weighed down by the burden of history.
“It’s the first time we’ve seen a tribute at this level, what’s more with an African head of state,” said French historian Julien Fargettas, an author of several books on colonial troops.
The story of African troops in the Great War is mostly one of exploitation and suffering — much like their European counterparts, who were sent to die in droves by commanders on the Western front.
Most Africans were forcibly recruited when French tactics turned coercive in 1915 and 1916 — provoking local riots — and then duplicitous from 1917, when men were promised benefits that never materialized.
Africans were also pressed into action on their own continent by France, Britain and Germany, as the European powers fought over dominions carved out at a notorious 1885 conference in Berlin.
For those sent to France, once they had survived the journey by boat, they were then thrown into a war they neither understood nor were prepared for.
“You need to imagine the shock for men who had come from some of the most remote areas of Africa who are then thrown into a modern, industrial war in the West,” Fargettas said.
Combat mortality rates were a subject of controversy for years, but Fargettas said there is no evidence to confirm the idea that they were “cannon fodder.”
About 22 to 25 percent died, comparable to the level for Europeans, he said.
However, off the battlefield, thousands more perished in the numbing cold of European winters or from a range of illnesses that their immune systems were unprepared for.
Mor Ndao, a history professor at the University of Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, said he believes France has never “recognized sufficiently the role and importance of the tirailleurs.”
“Their treatment has been unequal compared to their French and European brothers in arms,” he said.
What continues to rankle is the issue of military pensions — which were much lower for African fighters and unadjusted for decades — as well as passports, which were often promised, but rarely delivered.
China’s military yesterday showed off its machine-gun equipped robot battle “dogs” at the start of its biggest ever drills with Cambodian forces. More than 2,000 troops, including 760 Chinese military personnel, are taking part in the drills at a remote training center in central Kampong Chhnang Province and at sea off Preah Sihanouk Province. The 15-day exercise, dubbed Golden Dragon, also involves 14 warships — three from China — two helicopters and 69 armored vehicles and tanks, and includes live-fire, anti-terrorism and humanitarian rescue drills. The hardware on show included the so-called “robodogs” — remote-controlled four-legged robots with automatic rifles mounted on their
A Philippine boat convoy bearing supplies for Filipino fishers yesterday said that it was headed back to port, ditching plans to sail to a reef off the Southeast Asian country after one of their boats was “constantly shadowed” by a Chinese vessel. The Atin Ito (“This Is Ours”) coalition convoy on Wednesday set sail to distribute fuel and food to fishers and assert Philippine rights in the disputed South China Sea. “They will now proceed to the Subic fish port to mark the end of their successful mission,” the group said in a statement. A Philippine Coast Guard vessel escorting the convoy was
DISPUTED WATERS: The Philippines accused China of building an artificial island on Sabina Shoal, while Beijing said Manila was trying to mislead the global community The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) is committed to sustaining a presence in a disputed area of the South China Sea to ensure Beijing does not carry out reclamation activities at Sabina Shoal (Xianbin Reef), its spokesperson said yesterday. The PCG on Saturday said it had deployed a ship to Sabina Shoal, where it accused China of building an artificial island, amid an escalating maritime row, adding two other vessels were in rotational deployment in the area. Since the ship’s deployment in the middle of last month, the PCG said it had discovered piles of dead and crushed coral that had been dumped
STREET WATCH: Residents watched over barricades blocking roads and flew white flags to show that they intended to keep an eye on their neighborhoods France yesterday deployed troops to New Caledonia’s ports and international airport, banned TikTok and imposed a state of emergency after three nights of clashes that have left four dead and hundreds wounded. Pro-independence, largely indigenous protests against a French plan to impose new voting rules on its Pacific archipelago have spiraled into the deadliest violence since the 1980s, with a police officer among several killed by gunfire. On roads, the torched detritus amassed over four days of unrest was scattered amid fist-size hunks of rock and cement that appeared to have been flung during riots. Armored vehicles roved the city’s palm-lined boulevards, usually