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The President of the Republic, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, received this Thursday, October 16, the white paper on the Thiaroye massacre in 1944. The solemn ceremony, which took place in the banquet hall of the Palace of the Republic, brought together all members of the government, general officers of the army and the gendarmerie as well as diplomatic representatives accredited to Dakar, is "a decisive step in the rehabilitation of historical truth," according to the Head of State.

The scientific and memorial exercise of which the white paper is the result aims to rewrite history accurately by removing the many gray areas that persist around the massacre of hundreds of Senegalese riflemen by French colonial troops on December 1, 1944.

"The ceremony that brings us together today does not celebrate a memory: it consecrates an act of truth. The official presentation of the white paper on the Thiaroye massacre, which occurred on December 1, 1944, is a moment of history and conscience. It symbolizes the will of a State that questions its past, sheds light on its memory and claims, through knowledge, the inalienable right to justice and human dignity," declared the Head of State.

This document, President Diomaye emphasizes, "represents much more than a simple report." According to him, "it is a story constructed by us and for ourselves, based on tangible facts, drawn from the archives that we hold here and in France."

"This story is also the result of a refusal: that of not accepting that our history be taught to us by sources other than our own. We owe it to African youth," he insists.

Speaking on the sidelines of the presentation of the white paper, the president of the reflection committee on the Thiaroye massacre, Professor Mamadou Diouf, described the exercise as "a resumption of the right to narrate our own history, outside of the imperial soliloquy." He emphasized the need to introduce this Senegalese account of the Thiaroye story into training curricula to nourish Senegalese and African consciousness.