Still hot topic.
The historian Benjamin Stora will officially submit to Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday his report on “the memories of colonization and the Algerian war”, with proposals to achieve “a necessary Franco-Algerian reconciliation”, nearly 60 years after the end of the conflict, the Elysee said on Sunday.
An announcement that comes into debate around the draft bill separatism.
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Algerian War: "For Macron, the reconciliation of memories is a key issue"
The historian "makes several recommendations in his report that aim to achieve this necessary reconciliation of memories," adds the presidency.
Recognized specialist in the contemporary history of Algeria, Benjamin Stora was commissioned in July by Emmanuel Macron to "draw up a fair and precise inventory of the progress made in France on the memory of colonization and the Algerian war. ".
"The objective of this mission was to draw up a precise inventory of the look at these issues on both sides of the Mediterranean", specifies the Elysee.
The French and Algerian presidents have each appointed an expert - Abdelmadjid Chikhi for Algeria - to work on this still burning issue, as the 60th anniversary of Algeria's independence approaches (1962).
"Finish the historical work on the Algerian war"
"It is not a question of writing a common history of Algeria, but of considering cultural actions on specific subjects, to be determined, such as for example the archives or the question of the missing", explained in August the 'historian.
Emmanuel Macron charged him with this report as part of his initiatives to try to "finish the historical work on the Algerian war" because, he explained in December, "we have lots of memories of the Algerian war which are so many wounds ”.
In his speech on the defense of republican principles, in October at Mureaux (Yvelines), he declared that Islamist “separatism” was in part “nourished” by the “traumas” of France's “colonial past” and of the war. from Algeria, which "feeds resentments, unspoken".
VIDEO. "Islamist separatism": school, imams, associations ... what to remember from Macron's announcements
"I hope a lot from this Stora report because there is a need to reconcile memories" since "we have a common history, but memories which diverge", insisted on France Inter / franceInfo the first secretary of the PS Olivier Faure .
"I would like us to be able to say to the French men and women: the Republic has not been exempt from all reproach, it has committed errors, even mistakes and even crimes" but "that should not allow to say that the republican idea itself is condemned, ”he argued.
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Born in 1950 in Constantine, Algeria, Benjamin Stora teaches the history of the Maghreb, the wars of decolonization and Maghreb immigration in Europe at the University of Paris 13 and at Inalco (Oriental Languages).
He is notably the author of the essays "Gangrene and oblivion, the memory of the Algerian war", "Called to war in Algeria" or "Algeria, the invisible war".