Senegal’s revolutionary icon Omar Blondin Diop deserves justice

Forty-eight years ago, Omar Blondin Diop died in prison under suspicious circumstances. Justice is yet to be served.

On May 11, 1973, Senegalese revolutionary activist Omar Blondin Diop was declared dead in a prison on Gorée Island, off the coast of the Senegalese capital, Dakar. His life and tragic death have remained a potent symbol of the revolutionary struggle in Senegal. Today, his image is featuring prominently in anti-government and anti-neocolonialism protests. On March 2, 2021, just hours before Senegalese opposition leader Ousmane Sonko’s arrest, the Front for an Anti-Imperialist Popular and Pan-African Revolution (FRAPP), a major youth-led protest organisation, held a press conference to call for mobilisation against the “project to liquidate [opposition] activists” in Senegal. Diop’s portrait stood prominently behind the speakers at the presser. In the following days, thousands of youths took to the streets of Dakar to challenge the increasing authoritarianism of President Macky Sall and his suspected collusion with Senegal’s former colonial ruler, France. Many of them espouse the revolutionary values Diop stood for – anti-imperialism, anti-racism and pan-Africanism.