On the occasion of the National Day of Remembrance of the Traffic, Slavery and Their Abolition. on May 10, France 5 offers to discover the document Congo-Océan, a railroad and blood. Broadcast on Sunday May 5 at 10:40 p.m.
Directed by Catherine Bernstein, this 52-minute film traces the little-known story, between 1921 and 1934, of a construction site as colossal as it was devastating, a symbol of domination and colonial violence.
“From 1921 to 1934, France undertook in its colony of Congo the construction of a railway line called “Congo-Océan”, linking Brazzaville to Pointe Noire on the edge of the Atlantic. The lower part of the Congo River towards its mouth being non-navigable, a means of transport was necessary to transport and exploit the riches of French Equatorial Africa: oilseeds and cotton, coffee and cocoa, precious wood and rubber, gold, copper and ivory.
Forced labor, mistreatment, punishment of recalcitrants… this construction sows terror right to the edge of the Sahara. We are not coming back from the Congo-Ocean. Denounced at the time by the writer André Gide then by the famous journalist Albert Londres, the recruitment conditions like those of work on the construction site caused a scandal in the metropolis.
The forced labor which characterizes the construction of the Congo-Ocean strangely resembles the slavery abolished almost a century earlier. However, the Congo-Ocean affair is sinking into oblivion. Weaving together a body of unpublished archives and the testimony of the workers’ descendants, the story of the Congo-Ocean construction site — the deadliest of French colonization — alone reveals the devastating power of the colonial system.”
