Oumar Diémé, former Senegalese rifleman, bearer of the Olympic flame

This man, over 90 years old, who fought for France, will carry the Olympic flame at the end of July in Seine-Saint-Denis. A “beautiful symbol” at a time of “the trivialization of racism” considers an association for the memory of the riflemen.

Oumar Diémé, 91, was chosen to be one of the bearers of the Olympic flame which will cross the Seine-Saint-Denis, shortly before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games scheduled for July 26. As he tells it, Tuesday May 28 to AFP, in 1953 he decided to take a sidetrack by enlisting in the French army, fleeing the Gambia where his father had sent him to study the Koran so that he could become Imam like him. Having seen “all these people come back with medals and decorations“, he volunteers to go to Indochina, where colonial France is fighting the pro-independence Viet Minh.

In Indochina, he saw 22 men from his company fall into an ambush. He was then transferred to Algeria where he fought until 1962. It was in Algeria, against whose independence he fought, that he learned of Senegal’s independence. He then returned to his country for a few years, to Senegal, where he became a guard at the University of Dakar, then a courier in a bank in the capital before settling in France, in a small room of 17 square meters, in a home in Bondy.

In France, he must once again fight a battle, this time against the French State, to first obtain French nationality, then to be able to receive the minimum old age of 950 euros per month without having to spend half the year in France. . A right finally obtained in 2023. Not enough to widen the State deficit since when this decision was taken, the former Senegalese riflemen still living in France were only 37 left. Since then, Oumar Diémé has returned home, to his native village, where he is very happy, among his family, in the shade of the mango trees.

He believes that he had the “baraka“, he who returned alive and whole from the colonies. The luck which continues since he sees as a “prodigy“to have been chosen to carry the Olympic flame. A very normal prodigy, but also, as this president of the association of former Bondy riflemen says, a “beautiful symbol“, at the time of “the trivialization of racism on social networks allows us to show the richness and diversity of France“. A country for which tens of thousands of soldiers of its “black army“died in the name of a homeland that was not even theirs. The trivialization of racism, this other flame that licks the walls of democracy.