France’s parliament condemns 1961 police bloodbath of Algerians in Paris | EUROtoday

Issued on: 28/03/2024 – 14:18

2 min

In current years France has made a sequence of efforts to return to phrases with its colonial previous in Algeria.

Dozens of peaceable demonstrators died throughout a crackdown by Paris police on a protest by Algerians in 1961. The scale of the bloodbath was coated up for many years by French authorities earlier than President Emmanuel Macron condemned it as “inexcusable” in 2021.

The textual content of the decision harassed the crackdown came about “under the authority of police prefect Maurice Papon” and likewise referred to as for the official commemoration of the bloodbath.

The invoice, put ahead by Greens lawmaker Sabrina Sebaihi and ruling Renaissance social gathering MP Julie Delpech, was accredited by 67 lawmakers, with 11 in opposition to.

Sebaihi stated the vote represented the “first step” in the direction of the “recognition of this colonial crime, the recognition of this state crime.”

The time period “state crime” nonetheless doesn’t seem within the textual content of the decision, which was collectively drafted by Macron’s social gathering and the Elysee Palace.

Read extra October 17, 1961: A bloodbath of Algerians within the coronary heart of Paris

On the sixtieth anniversary of the bloodshed in 2021, Macron acknowledged that a number of dozen protesters had been killed, “their bodies thrown into the River Seine.”

The exact variety of victims has by no means been made clear and a few activists worry a number of hundred may have been killed.

“Let us spare a thought here today for these victims and their families, who have been hit hard by the spiral of violence”, Dominique Faure, the minister for native and regional authorities, stated on Thursday.

She famous that efforts had been made previously to recognise the bloodbath.

In 2012, then president Francois Hollande paid “tribute to the victims” of a “bloody crackdown” on the women and men demonstrating for “the right to independence”.

The rally was referred to as within the ultimate 12 months of France’s more and more violent try and retain Algeria as a north African colony, and in the midst of a bombing marketing campaign concentrating on mainland France by pro-independence militants.

However, Faure expressed reservations about establishing a special occasion to commemorate the bloodbath, mentioning that three dates already existed to “commemorate what happened during the Algerian war”.

“I think it is important to let history do the work before considering a new day of commemoration specifically for the victims of October 17, 1961.”

France has made a number of makes an attempt through the years to heal the injuries with Algeria, but it surely refuses to “apologise or repent” for the 132 years of usually brutal rule that resulted in 1962.

Read extraMacron’s condemnation of 1961 bloodbath in Paris ‘not enough’, historians say

(AFP)