"Faidherbe must fall!" ": Between 200 and 300 people demonstrated Saturday in Lille in front of the statue of General Faidherbe to demand the" withdrawal ", or" at least the contextualization ", of this" figure of French colonialism, violent and racist ".
"Decolonize, history and memory! Shouted the demonstrators, gathered peacefully from 1 p.m. in front of this imposing equestrian statue erected near the prefecture, at the entrance to one of the main arteries of the city center.
"Who wants to (still) celebrate colonialism? 200 years is enough! "Proclaimed a banner installed by this collective, born in 2018 at the time of the bicentenary of the birth of the general.
Representatives of the Survie association, the FUIQP (United Front of Immigrations and Popular Neighborhoods), African and undocumented defense groups, or the Critical History Workshop, were present.
“Around the world, since the death of George Floyd and in the context of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, statues of white slavers, colonialists and supremacists have fallen. […] We too have our colon statue to unbolt! “, Pleads the collective on social networks.
"We do not intend to withdraw it by force"
For his defenders, Louis Faidherbe (1818-1889), born in Lille and who ended his career as a socialist senator from the North, is above all a military figure who had preserved the region from the Prussian invasion in 1870.
But "he also colonized Senegal in extremely violent conditions, boasting of burning villages, and developed all kinds of racist theories," reacted Jean-François Rabot, member of the Survie association, on Saturday.
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“We do not intend to withdraw it by force. We would like the town hall, at a minimum, to affix an explanatory plaque, and ideally to remove it to place it in a museum, ”explained Jean-François Rabot again.
"We are not trying to erase, but on the contrary to give a story to this character which no one here no longer wonders who he is", also said the historian and representative of the collective Thomas Deltombe.
The essayist defends the idea of a "reversal of the symbol". "For example, we were offered to vegetate it, to make it a movement + made of grass +", he smiled.
Tensions with identities
About fifteen identity activists, who came to provoke the demonstrators, sparked tensions without ending the demonstration.
Thousands of kilometers away, in Saint-Louis, Senegal, the statue of Faidherbe - moved in early January to renovate the place of the same name - is also debated. A candidate for mayor, former minister Mary Tew Niane, for example, said on Twitter that he would withdraw it if he is elected.
“Let it emerge from the public space of Ndar (traditional name of Saint-Louis)! Reacted to AFP Thierno Dicko, head of a network of activists who "plans" to put the statue "at the bottom of the river" if it is reinstalled.
“Faidherbe sends us back to domination and oppression. Great men embody in Senegal the values of courage, determination […] They must be our references ”, also judges Zahir Fall, head of the citizen movement“ Wallu Ndar ”(“ Save Saint-Louis ”). In the street, this image "hurts me," he added.