Algiers and Paris agree on the memorial minimal | EUROtoday

The decision handed, which has above all a symbolic significance, “condemns the bloody and murderous repression of Algerians committed under the authority of the police prefect Maurice Papon October 17, 1961” in Paris, and in addition “wishes” “the inclusion of a day of commemoration” in “the agenda of national days and official ceremonies”.

Descendants of the victims of the repression of October 17, 1961 had been current within the hemicycle and had been applauded by deputies after the vote. Supported by the ecologist Sabrina Sebaihi and the Renaissance deputy Julie Delpech, the decision was accredited by 67 deputies (left and Renaissance), whereas 11 deputies from the National Rally (RN) voted towards. “I see a desire to destabilize our country through lies, fake news,” responded RN deputy Frank Giletti. The latter attacked a textual content based mostly, in line with him, on “lies based on FLN propaganda of the time”, whereas qualifying the National Liberation Front as a “terrorist” motion, “like Hamas [palestinien] is today.”

Algiers expected an “official apology”

On October 17, 1961, thousands of Algerians demonstrated at the call of the FLN in Paris against the curfew imposed “on Algerian employees” in the capital and its suburbs, “significantly between 8:30 p.m. and 5 a.m. 30 within the morning”, in line with the press launch from the Paris prefecture. Measure justified by the authorities on the time as a result of FLN assaults in Paris, which notably focused law enforcement officials. The response of the police and the remedy of these arrested represent, in line with historians, a “massacre” because the historian described it. Jean-Luc Einaudi. The latter reopened this file, which had remained closed for many years, along with his work The Battle of Paris, revealed in 1991. That similar yr, the primary commemoration organized by Franco-Algerians befell. But it was solely in 2001 that the City of Paris, with the socialist Bertrand Delanoë at its head, formally acknowledged these occasions by inaugurating a stele on the Saint-Michel bridge.

On October 17, 2012, President François Hollande revealed a press launch : “On October 17, 1961, Algerians demonstrating for the right to independence were killed during a bloody repression. The Republic lucidly recognizes these facts. Fifty-one years after this tragedy, I pay tribute to the memory of the victims. » Algiers had welcomed “the good intentions” of Paris, whereas ready for an “official apology”.

Since Thursday's parliamentary vote, Algeria has not but formally reacted. But the federal government day by day El Moudjahid he feedback enthusiastically in a big headline on the entrance web page this Saturday: “A step towards refoundation”. “The recent decisions taken by the French Parliament augur a new stage in the rebuilding of bilateral relations and things are being put in place positively, slowly,” writes the official media, which recollects that Emmanuel Macron “had already takes a first step in this direction, by declaring, in October 2021, that “the crimes committed on October 17, 1961 under the authority of Maurice Papon are inexcusable for the Republic”. Already in October 2021, Macron was the first French president to pay an official tribute to these Algerian victims of repression and had placed a wreath of flowers on the Bezons bridge, which had been taken by the demonstrators that rainy evening of October 17, 1961. This commemoration had been recommended by the report Stora, handed over a few months earlier to Macron, on the memory of colonization and the Algerian war.