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On September 26, 2002, the Joola, a ferry that shuttled between Dakar and Ziguinchor, sank off the Gambian coast. Balance sheet: 1,863 dead officially, more than 2,000 according to the associations of victims.
From our special correspondent in Ziguinchor,
The commemorations should begin this Monday at 10:30 a.m. UT with a wreath laying and prayers at the Kantène cemetery. The official ceremony will then be held at the port of Ziguinchor in the presence of authorities, families and relatives of the castaways, as well as survivors. 20 years ago, only 64 passengers on the Joola had survived the shipwreck off the coast of The Gambia.
Léandre Coly is one of them. He was 37 on September 26, 2002. Twenty years later, this devout Catholic says he has no grudge against anyone. ” I have a light heart. I am grateful to be here to speak. But that doesn’t mean that I forget the people who stayed there. It must be a lesson. That’s why I want the boat to be refloated, so that people can go and do their commemorations. This boat, if we bail it out, it could be used as a cemetery “, he believes.
“The souls are at the bottom of the ocean and speak to us on a daily basis. They reach out their hand to us to come and pick them up. The swell hits them, massacres them, because the sea is not a cemetery. We have to get them out. This would allow us to free ourselves, to mourn. »
Senegal: the appeal of Elie Diatta, close to a victim of the sinking of the Joola
Families still demand justice
The refloating of the wreck is one of the main demands of the victims. This is the theme of this day of commemoration. Many families also still hope for justice. The procedures launched in Senegal and in France have been closed for several years. At the time, President Abdoulaye Wade had nevertheless said that the whole truth would be revealed and promised sanctions. ” I asked the Chief of the General Staff and the High Command of Military Justice to propose sanctions to me in the event that faults were noted, he said in a televised address on October 2, 2002. We have to do our introspection and admit that the vices that are at the root of this disaster find their foundations in our habits of lightness, lack of seriousness, responsibility, sometimes greed. »
But today, ” there is still neither guilty nor responsible “, denounces one of the groups of victims. Relatives of the disappeared are also demanding better care for orphans of the Joola. The tragedy left its mark on their generation, underlines Alassane Thiam, whose father died in the sinking. He particularly regrets the lack of psychological care and support for professional integration. ” There’s too much left undone about orphans “, he laments.
Duty of memory
For families, the challenge of this day is also the duty of memory. Commemorations are also planned for the cemeteries of Mbao and Saint-Lazare, in Dakar, where many victims of the Joolabefore a tribute organized on the aptly named Place du Souvenir.
Léandre Coly for his part wrote a song a few months after the tragedy, which will be sung on Monday. He titled it Bu Gnu Khamoonthat’s to say ” If we knew ». « The idea of traveling was just a joy, when we didn’t know that the boat carrying the passengers would never let them get off at the port of Dakar. This song is a way to pay tribute to the victims. This story should not be forgotten. I will fight for it “, he promises.
The Joola, a boat that shuttled between Dakar, the capital, and Ziguinchor, in the south of the country, sank on September 26, 2002 off the coast of Gambia, officially killing 1,863 people, more than 2,000 according to associations of families of victims, and only 64 survivors, including a Frenchman. One of the biggest civil shipping disasters in the world, even more deadly than the Titanicrecalls our correspondent in Dakar, Thea Olivier.
The Joola was packed that day. There were, on board, pupils and students who were returning to Dakar for the start of the new school year and university, soldiers, a football team and the “banabanas”, these traders who sell Casamance products in a market in the capital. In total, nearly 2,000 people were on board this boat, whose maximum capacity was 580 passengers. An overload of a ship that was in poor condition, rough seas, a probable error in the captain’s maneuver… Faced with these cumulative factors, the Joola overturned in the open sea, around 11 p.m. Help took 18 hours to come. Virtually all of the passengers had disappeared into the ocean.
In 2003, the Senegalese justice dismissed the case, concluding that the sole responsible was the captain, who sank with his ship. In France, despite an alarming expertise on the condition of the boat, the long legal process ended in a dismissal in 2018. The families of victims and the survivors are still demanding that justice be done, but also that the bailout of the wreck is finally carried out. Twenty years after the tragedy, the memorial-museum, under construction in Ziguinchor, is still not finished.