1983. Forty years ago, with the trial of the Casamance prisoners following a march organized the year before, justice presented itself to the Senegalese as the final act in a national tragedy that was about to unfold. The facts of this crime, nicknamed the “Ziguinchor events”, are presented in the words of the President of the Court of State Security: “During 1982, an insurrectionary movement was born with the aim of separating Casamance from Senegal, under the acronym MFDC (Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance). However, the state’s justification for the measures taken was its desire to reaffirm the indivisibility of the Republic of Senegal, and it chose a bloody repression of a peaceful demonstration by the people of Casamance, whose sole aim was to express their frustrations within the framework of legality and democracy offered by the institutions of the Republic.
At the time, the regime in power had shown no “political will to adhere to regional realities”, not even to demonstrate its own Senghorian understanding of the Republic while deifying the imperative of national unity in a “constant concern to promote the moral and spiritual development of the Senegalese people in its fertile diversity”. On the contrary, for the socialists, the only language that had to prevail was that of “the State’s reason”. This was to oblige the “angry people of Ziguinchor” with their “spirit of parochialism”, which was “not Senegalese”, to “preserve reason” (Le Soleil, Dec. 1982 – Jan. 83).
The people of Casamance were subjected to lies, slander, denunciations, settling scores, theft, rape, murder, disappearances, and summary executions. Not to speak of arbitrary arrests, deportations to prisons in Dakar; men, women, students, without distinction, held onto justice as their only hope of sowing peace in Casamance, before a trial that “easily led Senegal into a blind alley to follow up an arbitrary file, poorly put together and legally devoid of grievances, so much so that the investigation was overrated, falsified and monstrously crude” (Me Babacar Niang, 1983).
In 1983, many of these Senegalese were accused, hunted down by the security forces and, it must be repeated, only relied on the Senegalese justice system to sow peace by either freeing innocent citizens or condemning them to become fighters for the cause of independence by default.
The arrest of Father Augustin Diamacoune Senghor, the parish priest of Kafountine, listed as a historical reference in the Recueil d’événements du Sénégal (1974) and a charismatic figure in the local collective memory, and his trial and conviction by the Senegalese courts for having masterminded the “events of Ziguinchor” and thus the MFDC, even though he maintained that he was innocent, mobilized popular sympathy for the MFDC. The movement was to rise from the ashes because of the combined effect of the injustice meted out to a democratically devoted priest and the brutality of the security forces, who threw young men and fathers out of their homes and forced them to hide in the nearby forest, only venturing out at night.
The armed rebellion in Casamance, the “uncivil war” imposed on the Senegalese people, was thus to experience its first “Battle of Ziguinchor” in 1983. The course of the trial marked a point of no return. Prisoners and fugitives alike were convinced by the verdict of 13 December 1983 that, because they had taken part in the December 1982 march for legitimate demands, they were now considered secessionists, obliged to commit themselves to an independence cause which they could not articulate politically, and condemned to live as maquisards.
It is the repression of the democratic expression of frustration, coupled with the injustice done to innocent people, that has revived a tradition of distrust and resistance to the state among the people of the Casamance, more than adherence to an ideology of independence (in a world where ideas kill ideas). The feeling of injustice is more unifying than secessionist propaganda. It is against injustice that an entire generation has fought an “uncivil war” in which many other generations have grown up.
The “Medal of the Righteous” is not a reward for the Casamance alone. It is the Senegalese in general who do not accept judicial persecution, especially when the evidence of the crime is fictitious, when statesmen arrogate to themselves principles that only serve to judicialize the Senegalese political scene, of “Force reste à la loi”, which is not burdened with any real justice.
2023. The concept of “rebel” reappears on the Senegalese judicial scene. Ousmane Sonko (to name no names) is an incidental beacon of hope for many Senegalese. But because he comes from the Casamance, and without any form of discrimination, his supporters, Senegalese citizens, are hunted down, speedily tried, imprisoned, and killed at every demonstration, because the pro-state propaganda wanted to turn them into an extension of the MFDC (Le Quotidien, June 2022).
Given the history of Casamance, it would be necessary to be particularly attentive to the consequences that could convey the renewal of the feelings of frustration, fear and doubt that have become certainties for this Senegalese youth. The persistence of an anti-Casamance political discourse, which could be reflected in the behavior of some politicians and of those in power in the first place, would confirm the systemic nature of exclusion. This would be demonstrated by the blatant way in which an attempt is being made to eliminate a leader and political opponent who, moreover, is being treated as an accomplice to the rebellion on the sole basis of his Casamance origins.
Today, the whole of Senegal is standing up against the exploitation of certain pseudo-nationalist sentiments. These sentiments only serve to divide the country. With a youth that no longer wants the notion of national unity to be an empty word, or for Casamance’s belonging to Senegal to remain just a variable that does not integrate the undeniable signs of Casamance’s specificity, which is – and nobody denies – a permanent fact of our political history that should be taken seriously if national unity is to be built.
Senegal, especially its youth, needs a judgement of appeasement!
But to adjudicate in an African context is not only to know the criminal and penal law. It is also and above all to know one’s own society, to understand how it is regulated, to have the ability to be and to act in a national moment. And the current situation is marked by the commitment of the population, of a youth ready to be called a “rebel” to defend a politician, the mayor of Ziguinchor, who they perceive is being badly treated by the executive power, which wants to convince the Senegalese with difficulty that in law, the only Western experience, as it is imposed as knowledge of law, can prevail without taking into account the social context.
The Senegalese people, through their youth, are waiting for a judicial system that will temper the executive power that is judicializing the Senegalese democratic model, which is now n by the unreflected by pinion of the citizens and by our cultural values. The Senegalese judiciary has a moral and a legal duty, a social and a human responsibility, to succeed where politics has failed. For this purpose, it must be a justice of the Senegalese people, which today is in mobilization against injustice!
Signatories
Section 22.45
(Law on Public Universities 2015-02). Section 2: The missions of the universities. Article 2. -The training of executives from Senegal and other countries is one of the missions of the universities. To that end, they are responsible for – (para. 4) the promotion of service to the community; – (para. 5) the development of African cultural values.
Pape Chérif Bertrand Bassène, Akandijak, UCAD – Marie Louise Bassène, UCAD – Ndiouga Benga, UCAD – Mamadou Baldé, FASTEF – Lamine Faye, UCAD – Lamine Bodian, UCAD – Ibrahima Diémé, UGB.
