The secretariat for veterans announced on Wednesday the payment of “exceptional aid” to veterans wishing to return to Senegal.
mo12345lemonde with AFP
A dozen tirailleurs of Senegalese origin living in France will be able to return to Senegal in April thanks to exceptional financial assistance from the French State, learned the France-Presse agency (AFP) Wednesday 1
“This important, and exceptional aid”, decided by the Secretary of State for Veterans and Memory, Patricia Mirallès, is part of the solidarity that the State has towards veterans and (…) will allow these skirmishers to go home in good conditions, “said one of his advisers.
This aid aims to finance the return journey, the move and the resettlement of these people in Senegal. “Some have accumulated several decades in France, it’s a lifetime that they have to win and therefore we help them too,” said the advisor.
The State Secretariat did not wish to specify the amount of this aid to preserve the “serenity” of the return of the beneficiaries. This amount has been set with regard to needs and “in accordance with the interested parties and associations” which are historically with them, explained the advisor. The secretariat for veterans estimates the number of Senegalese tirailleurs living in France at thirty.
During a first trip scheduled for April, a dozen – a majority of which are over 85 years old and some 95 years old – will already return to Senegal. Mostly people alone. “This is one of the reasons why [they] wish to return to Senegal is to be with their families,” he added.
created under the Second Empire (1852-1870) and dissolved in the early 1960s, the French body of Senegalese skirmishers brought together soldiers born in the ancient French colonies in Africa and enrolled in the French army. The term ended up designating all the soldiers from sub -Saharan Africa who were fighting under the French flag, whatever their nationality or country of origin. They participated in the Second World War and the decolonization wars, especially in Indochina and Algeria. Their story has long been a misestimed, even ignored.
The ministry explained that he was “unknown” today of “skirmishers who are not of Senegalese nationality” living in France, but if there were any return aid system. In January, the secretariat for veterans had announced that the last Senegalese skirmishers could return to their country of origin while touching the minimum old age.