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Algerian War: Macron's new gesture

2021-10-16T05:15:37.767Z


Emmanuel Macron will chair this Saturday in Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine) the ceremony commemorating the 60th anniversary of the bloody repression of a


Sixty years ago, on October 17, 1961, a demonstration pro-FLN - the Algerian independence movement - of some 30,000 "French Muslims from Algeria", as they were then called, turned into a massacre.

The Parisian police fired with live ammunition, killing and throwing demonstrators into the Seine, killing well over 120 according to historians, while the power officially recognized for decades only ... 3 dead (if the repression culminated on October 17 it actually lasted from September to November 1951).

Present this Saturday at the 60th anniversary ceremony at the Pont de Bezons in Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine), through which men, women and children inhabitants of the large neighboring slum of Nanterre passed to go to the demonstration, Emmanuel Macron will be the first President to commemorate this fatal date in person, in particular in the presence of the families of the victims.

His predecessor François Hollande had taken a first step by acknowledging in 2012, by press release, a “bloody repression”.

The Head of State, who will not deliver a speech but will publish a text at the end of the ceremony, "will go further", promises an adviser to the Elysee without saying more ...

To read also "I will never forget all this blood ...": 60 years later, Fatma remembers the violent repression of October 17, 1961

The same ensures, however, that there will be no apologies or requests for forgiveness, unlike the recent gesture against the harkis.

Explanation ?

“The way in which the harkis were treated results from a political choice implemented by the organs of the State, there was therefore a request for forgiveness - accepted with good heart - for what the Republic inflicted on them.

On October 17, 1961, it was a matter of acts of violence in the context of the curfew imposed on

French Muslims in Algeria

: the prefect of police Papon certainly had the hand but not the order to shoot the demonstrators ”, justifies the Elysee.

The text written by Macron could also mention the role of the Paris police headquarters.

The presidential election and tensions with Algeria in the background

This further step in the “memorial work” on the Algerian war is in line with the recommendations of Benjamin Stora's report of last January. After the “pardon” to the harkis of September 20, the recognition of the October massacre today will remain the 60th anniversary of the Evian accords on March 18, 2022 ... a few days before the first round of the presidential election. Electoral considerations are obviously not absent from the mind of the president (not yet) candidate for re-election, whose approach of "appeasement" de facto takes the opposite view of the polemicist Eric Zemmour.

Emmanuel Macron will he succeed in appeasing the spirits until Algiers, more than ever in cold with Paris?

The Elysee does not even pretend to believe it.

"Experience teaches us that whatever the quality of the gestures accomplished, it is rarely sufficient, rarely relevant in the eyes of the Algerian authorities", observes, fatalist, an adviser.

Source: leparis

All news articles on 2021-10-16

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