Fifty years ago in Biafra, the over-media coverage of a human drama
Fifty years ago in Biafra, the over-media coverage of a human drama
Generation Biafra (2/3). During the conflict in Nigeria, unbearable images flooded newspapers and television. With hindsight, their authors say they have been "manipulated" by the Elysee.
By Pierre Lepidi and Mariama Darame Posted today at 5:00 p.m.
Western photographers take a picture of a child suffering from malnutrition as a result of the Biafran war, in Owerri, 1970.
Western photographers take a picture of a child suffering from malnutrition as a result of the Biafran war, in Owerri, 1970. A. Abbas / Magnum Photos
On December 31, 1968, during his traditional end-of-year speech to the French, General de Gaulle deplored the “slump” that the country experienced in May. "But the nation has recovered, " assures the general during these vows, his last. He then describes the situation in the Middle East, speaks of the "gigantic" role of China, then evokes "the right to dispose of valiant Biafra". At the end of 1968, the French knew this province in south-eastern Nigeriawhich proclaimed its independence eighteen months earlier and the humanitarian catastrophe that plays out there. With a lot of reports, they took up the cause for this African territory which is fighting against the regular Nigerian army.
France does not officially support the Biafran secession. But the Elysée sees in this desire for emancipation an opportunity to weaken Nigeria, an English-speaking country surrounded by former French-speaking colonies, which has received the support of the United Kingdom and the United States. "The oil zone of Biafra was claimed by everyone, including the English because Nigeria is a former British colony", remembers Bernard Kouchner, who left in May 1968 for the Red Cross as a doctor: " Relations between De Gaulle and the Anglo-Saxon world were appalling at that time. "
Archives September 13, 1968: "France intends to increase its aid to Biafra"
A sentence pronounced by the general and reported by Jacques Foccart, secretary general of the Elysee for African and Malagasy affairs, sums up the French position well: “We must neither intervene nor give the impression of having chosen. But all in all, the fragmentation of Nigeria is desirable and if Biafra succeeds it will not be a bad thing. " In fact, this statement is reflected in the involvement of the French secret services to Biafran troops, but also by sending arms and mercenaries. "I have met some of them and I can tell you that they have played a terrible role," assures Bernard Kouchner to World Africa .As for the weapons, I saw them at the airport where we were going to collect medicines, but they were mostly old things. "
"Do not turn off your station ..."
In fact, it is on the humanitarian level that France wants to put itself on the scene to push its strategy. And for this, the government will encourage wide media coverage. "From the self-proclamation of independence, the Biafran leaders formed a government including a ministry of information and a 'propaganda department' made up of the intellectual ibo elite, the majority tribe" , writes Barbara Jung in an article entitled "The television image as a weapon of war: example of the Biafra war, 1967-1970", published in 2007 in the Bulletin of the Pierre-Renouvin Institute. She shows how, by broadcasting dramatic images of destroyed cities, abandoned corpses and starving children, the reports openly condemn the attitude of the federal government towards civilians.
The approach does not only apply to the written press, because the television editors are also seizing the subject. “While the tribulations of the African civil wars were of little interest to the mainstream media at the time, the broadcast of television images of emaciated and starving children at prime time aroused a significant wave of emotion and generated the mobilization of civil societies ”, explains Marie-Luce Desgrandchamps, historian and professor at the universities of Paris-1 and Geneva. Before the broadcast of a report on the television news, Pierre Sabbagh, star presenter, warns viewers: " Do not turn off your set even if the images you are going to see are unbearable ..." In fact, the journalist quickly became involved in the defense of the ibo secessionists by launching two national fundraising campaigns on the air.
Archives August 15, 1968: "A people dying of hunger"
The war in Biafra is also a war of images in which a generation of photographers will reveal themselves. The conflict becomes a theater for war photojournalism. After having co-founded the Gamma agency in 1966, the French photographer Raymond Depardon, already a good connoisseur of the African continent - he has covered Algeria, Côte d'Ivoire and Rhodesia - takes off for Biafra in particularly difficult conditions. difficult:
“I went to look for the body of photographer Marc Auerbach, whom I knew and who had died in a plane crash in Biafra . His father, who sold weapons to the Biafran rebellion, had agreed to him boarding one of his planes to go there and take pictures. But the plane had an accident and Marc Auerbach was killed. "
"We were working hard"
Raymond Depardon leaves as a director with his friend the photographer Gilles Caron. The latter publishes in Paris-Match several reports on the Biafra tragedy. He is sometimes accompanied by British photographer Don McCullin, who works for the Sunday Times . "The media kept asking us, so we worked extra hard," recalls Raymond Depardon, who was also preparing a 16mm film of about twenty minutes which will be broadcast on French television and then bought by the BBC. :
“On the pitch, it was difficult. The roads were crowded and children were dropping like flies from the famine. Outside the main roads, people lived in appalling conditions and kids were the first victims. "
Nigerian Federal Government troops with photographer Bruno Barbey during the Biafran War (1967-1970).
Nigerian Federal Government troops with photographer Bruno Barbey during the Biafran War (1967-1970). Bruno Barbey / Magnum Photos
Bruno Barbey, of the Magnum agency, publishes his photos in the German weekly Stern , the British newspaper Newsweek and Paris-Match . “It was one of the first conflicts I covered,” he says today:
“ So it's true that I was shocked by the violence of the fighting. I was there when the town of Nsukka was taken over by the regular army. There were corpses all over the university, skeletal children roaming the streets. Before leaving for Biafra, we could not imagine that we were going to see so many horrors. "
All these big names in photography only realized a posteriori that they had been manipulated in order to sensitize public opinion on the Biafran cause. "I did not feel the support of France at the start of the war, but then it became obvious, assures Bruno Barbey. Journalists and photographers traveling to Biafra boarded planes chartered by arms traffickers or mercenaries. "
A miserable image of Africa
"We were naive, we did not realize that we were completely manipulated by the French authorities and the oil companies" , says Raymond Depardon, who worked in 1968 with Jean-François Chauvel, journalist at Le Figaro. Little by little, the role of France and in particular of the “Africa cell” of the Elysee Palace, headed by Jacques Foccart, pillar of Françafrique, became obvious to him:
“I realized afterwards: the oil resources of the region were a huge political and economic stake. The message that we had to convey through our photos and our films was: “Watch the horrible Nigerians kill the Igbo, dignified and intelligent people, and how they starve people without giving them their independence”. "
Archives January 19, 1970: "France retains significant economic interests in Nigeria"
When the guns fell silent in January 1970, after the surrender of the Biafran forces supported by hundreds of mercenaries (French, Germans, Rhodesians, South Africans…), the human toll was abysmal. Fifty years later, the number of victims of fighting and famine remains imprecise, estimated at "more than 1 million". But the over-mediatization of the conflict and the unbearable images broadcast in newspapers and on television still permeate memories. By sending back a miserable image of the African continent, for decades they have nourished a collective imagination where Africa is equated with wars, famines and political instability.
Whose fault is it ? "It has often been said that the tragedy of Biafra was the shame of Africa", writes Phlippe Decraene, special envoy of the World , in a report published in 1969: "It is also, without a doubt, the shame of the Europe. "
Summary of the “Generation Biafra” series
Fifty years after the armistice, Le Monde Afrique looks back on this civil war which killed more than 1 million people in Nigeria and marked a whole generation in France.
Presentation of the “Generation Biafra” series Episode 1 The advent of humanitarian aid "à la française" Episode 2 The over-media coverage of a human drama
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