He was a Senegalese intellectual, artist, and political activist who fought against France’s dominance in post-independence Senegal, particularly under the leadership of Léopold Sedar Senghor.
Born on September 18, 1946, in Niamey, he made history in 1966 as the first Senegalese student to gain admission to the École Normale Supérieure de Saint-Cloud, a feat that Senghor himself had failed to achieve years earlier. He became an active member of the Union of Communist Students and later the Union of Marxist-Leninist Communist Youth.
In 1967, he portrayed “Comrade X,” a black Maoist activist, in the play La Chinoise by famous film maker Jean-Luc Goddard. The following year, he emerged as a prominent figure in the May 68 Movement in France and the subsequent protests against Senegalese President Léopold Sedar Senghor.
In 1969, in October while returning from a summer vacation in Senegal, Omar Blondin Diop was expelled from French territory due to his political activities the previous year. However, after intervention from President Senghor, he was readmitted to France in October 1970, though he did not return to the École Normale Supérieure whose training he considered produced “little monsters of bookish knowledge and grotesque pretension.”
1971, from the evening of January 15 to 16, a protest erupted in Dakar against the excessive work being done on the main roads in preparation for a brief visit by French President Georges Pompidou. A group of about fifteen activists inspired by the Black Panther Party and the Uruguayan Tupamaros, including two younger brothers of Omar Blondin Diop, set fire to the French Cultural Center and an annex of the Ministry of Public Works. Three weeks later, they planned an attack on the presidential motorcade but were arrested before they could act.
Leaving Paris immediately, Omar Blondin Diop planned to free his younger brothers and comrades after training in armed struggle. With several friends, he went to a Fatah Camp in Syria, about thirty kilometers from Damascus, where day and night he learned how to handle weapons and fed on dry bread, olives, and tea. The group then made their way to Algiers, known as the “capital of the world revolution,” a hub for various liberation movements of the time, including the Black Panther Party, which had established an international office there. Their objective was to kidnap the French Ambassador to Senegal in exchange for their imprisoned comrades, with logistical support from the Algerian National Liberation Front.
But a crisis broke between the African American leaders Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party in exile was unable to help them as planned. After a stopover in Conakry, Omar Blondin Diop settles in Bamako, where part of his family lives. There he interacts with young people who are favourable to Marxism, particularly the children of former leaders of the fallen regime of Modibo Keïta.
1971: At the end of November, on the eve of an official visit by President Senghor to Mali, the military junta of Moussa Traoré proceeds with the preventive arrest of political exiles, including Omar Blondin Diop.
1972: Extradited to Senegal, he is sentenced on March 23 by the Senegalese Special Tribunal to 3 years in prison for “undermining state security”. He is imprisoned in the prison on Gorée Island and sent to disciplinary cells several times after altercations with prison guards. Interior Minister Jean Collin, a former French colonial administrator who became a Senegalese leader after independence (and President Senghor’s nephew-in-law by marriage) expressly ordered them to be uncompromising towards political prisoners affiliated with the “Blondin Diop brothers”.
1973: On May 11, the Senegalese prison administration announced the death of Omar Blondin Diop, presented as a “suicide” by hanging. The news provoked intense popular anger, recalling the fiery days of May 68. On May 12, a hurried burial of the deceased was organized by Interior Minister Jean Collin and carried out by riot police.
He died in prison, killed by a French minister of “independent Senegal”, on an island where African slaves used to wait for their slave ships…
In the same year, on June 1, in response to international pressure, President Senghor held a press conference in Paris during which he stated that he felt he was being manipulated. By whom? He didn’t say. A few days later, on June 6, Omar Blondin Diop’s father, who had attended the autopsy of the body and noted “several violent trauma to the bulbar and lumbosacral regions resulting in a severe concussion,” filed a complaint against an unknown person for “intentional assault and battery resulting in death and failure to assist a person in danger.”
The investigating judge Moustapha Touré conducted his investigation and noted irregularities in the prison log: Omar Blondin Diop fainted the week before his death was announced and the prison administration took no steps to treat him. The judge then began indicting several prison guards but did not follow through. He was removed from the case and replaced by Judge Elias Dosseh who ended the legal proceedings by issuing an “order of incompetence”.
Since 1973: despite an endless series of complaints filed by his family and friends, particularly in 2013, on the fortieth anniversary of his death, the case of Omar Blondin Diop’s death has never been reopened. Despite the changes of regime and successive presidents, notably the socialist government of Abdoulaye Wade. Omar Blondin Diop has become a symbol of resistance for a section of Senegalese youth today, and his photo was resurfaced during anti-imperialist demonstrations.
Did his militant and political actions warrant his assassination? The French-speaking Che Guevara would have turned 78 today. To this day, no one has been held accountable for his assassination during the rule of the so-called poet-president. Why?
“Things fall apart,” Achebe remarked. We have endured this for 78 years!
Until the next take. Read more about this African freedom dreamer, killed by a so-called poet-president
Teju
