Tirailleur - Tiaroye Incident and Compensation Controversy

Tiaroye Incident and Compensation Controversy

As colonial subjects, tirailleurs were not awarded the same pensions as their French (European) brothers in arms after World War II. The discrimination led to a mutiny of Senegalese tirailleurs in Dakar at Camp Tiaroye in December 1944. The tirailleurs involved were former prisoners of war who had been repatriated to West Africa and placed in a holding camp awaiting discharge. They demonstrated in protest against the failure of the French authorities to pay salary arrears and discharge allowances. French soldiers guarding the camp opened fire killing thirty-five African soldiers. The provisional government of Charles de Gaulle, concerned at the impact of the Tiaroye incident on serving tirailleurs acted quickly to ensure that claims for back pay and other money owed were settled.

When France's African colonies achieved independence between 1956 and the early 1960s, the military pensions of veterans who became citizens of the new nations were frozen. By contrast their French counterparts, who might have served in the same units and fought in the same battles, received pensions that were adjusted for inflation in France itself.

While the imbalanced situation was widely deplored, successive French governments did not act on the complaints of former French Army soldiers. One rationale for the freezing of the pensions was that increased levels would have created an income gap between the former soldiers and the rest of the populations in African countries where the cost of living was significantly lower than in France.

It was only in 2006 that President Jacques Chirac, reportedly moved by Rachid Bouchareb's movie Indigènes, gave instructions to increase the pensions of former colonial soldiers. However, more than forty years after the colonies had gained independence and sixty years after World War II had ended, many of the veterans had already died.