2023-12-04 16:22:42
“It would be a great honor” On the phone, Oumar Diémé speaks to us from Dakar, but his voice immediately brightens when he learns that the call comes from Seine-Saint-Denis. “Ah, how’s my department?” » This former Senegalese rifleman, who lived in a home in Bondy for a long time, might be one of the 200 bearers of the Olympic flame during his visit to the department on July 25 or 26.
In any case, this is what the Department proposed to the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee.
“Through Oumar Diémé, it is all the African fighters from the former French colonies, whose history, punctuated by sacrifices, is indissolubly linked to ours, that we want to honor. », wrote the president of Seine-Saint-Denis Stéphane Troussel on his return from Dakar, in November, where he had met the former rifleman, at the initiative in particular of Aïssata Seck, elected opposition member of the town of Bondy.
Since 2008, the woman who is president of the Association for the memory and history of Senegalese riflemen has invested a lot to rescue from oblivion these elderly men with discreet silhouettes, whom she saw coming and going on the market. Bondy.
“Having a former Senegalese rifleman carrying the flame would be a strong symbol. It would restore a presence to this forgotten part of colonial history, as the film Tirailleurs by Mathieu Vadepied did before,” underlines Aïssata Seck.
In Indochina from 53 to 54
This film, released last January, recounted the dark and desperate plunge of two Senegalese into the First World War, thrown into this conflict because they were born French at the time of colonization. For Oumar Diémé, the conflict is a little more recent, but no less painful: the war in Indochina, then a French possession. “After 6 months of training in Saint-Louis, I was designated to be part of a detachment to go to Indochina,” says the former soldier. On October 29, 1953, we left for Indochina and on December 8, we were taken by plane to Tonkin, in North Vietnam. We stayed there until the end of the war in April-May 1954.”
The veteran will say no more. It is Aïssata Seck who fills the gaps: “Oumar Diémé was very tested by the Indochina war, like all the other riflemen. Basically, he didn’t want to go there, he wondered every day what he was doing there. Finding themselves faced with people they had to consider as enemies even though they understood their desire for independence, it was difficult…” explains the woman whose maternal grandfather was also sent to Indochina.
Worse, following this long and terrifying conflict, there is no respite: the French colonial power still wants to commit its troops to another war, that of Algeria. “But on the open sea, in the boat that was to take us to Oran, there was a mutiny,” says Oumar Diémé. The guys revolted, they said there was no question of going to Algeria. »
Naturalization obtained following a long struggle
“Thanks” to this rebellion, Oumar Diémé can finally return home to Senegal, but this is not his last fight. The others will be administrative, like the one, carried out in the 2000s, which saw him claim his French nationality. From 1992 to 2023, a whole group of former Senegalese riflemen lived in Bondy, in a workers’ hostel, in difficult conditions. The State refuses them French nationality, even though they were born in colonial France and fought for it. And forces them to live 6 months in France, far from their family, to be entitled to their veteran’s pension. This is the time when the small group meets Aïssata Seck, who mobilizes opinion. Everything will have a happy outcome and will lead to the naturalization of 41 African riflemen in 2016 under the presidential mandate of François Hollande.
So, carrying the flame for all former African soldiers, for those who are no longer there or those who can no longer walk would “naturally be an honor” for Oumar Diémé. “We have always wanted to defend the values of the Republic, but carrying this flame would also represent Africa,” maintains this strong man who, at 91, now spends peaceful days between Dakar and Bignona, his birthplace. in Casamance. “A village renowned for the large number of Senegalese wrestlers (a form of traditional wrestling) that it has trained,” underlines Oumar, obviously a sports enthusiast.
On July 25, 2024, we hope to see the long silhouette of Oumar, perhaps helped by his son Elage, brandish the Olympic flame and pass through the streets of Bondy, in the name of all the African fighters engaged by France in its conflicts. and quickly forgotten since.
Christophe Lehousse
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