A cemetery and a memorial will be erected on the military ground of Gard (South-East) where dozens of children who died in harki camps were buried without a dignified burial 60 years ago, the French government promised on Friday April 21.
"
We must repair and recognize the harm done to them
," said Patricia Miralles, Secretary of State for Veterans and Memory, during a visit to the site of the former Saint-Maurice camp. l'Ardoise, north of Nîmes, then on the military ground where the graves of 27 people, almost all of them children or even infants, were unearthed.
"
The families will be able to recover the bodies to bury them in another place or choose to keep them on the spot
" in this future cemetery, specified the Secretary of State, in the presence of families, local authorities and representatives of associations of harkis, after everyone has laid flowers on these makeshift graves bounded by a white rope.
"Little Raoul", first child discovered
"
We will have a beautiful cemetery, commensurate with their suffering, with a memorial, as the families wish
", insisted Patricia Miralles: "
The symbol is perhaps to write the name of little Raoul, the first child who was discovered
” here and whose mother, present on Friday, “
herself concealed the fact that her newborn had been buried there
”, she continued.
French Muslims mainly recruited as auxiliaries of the French army during the Algerian war of independence (1954-1962), the harkis had been abandoned by France at the end of the conflict.
After fleeing reprisals in Algeria, tens of thousands of them and their families had been parked in France, in "
transit and reclassification camps
" run by the army, with deplorable living conditions, marked by excess infant mortality.
Unprecedented excavations
In Saint-Maurice l'Ardoise, one of these main camps, dozens of babies had been buried without a decent burial by their relatives or by soldiers.
In the Gard, this wild cemetery came out of oblivion on March 20, finally located by the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP).
These unprecedented excavations had been decided by the State after the revelation of the existence of this cemetery in an AFP investigation of September 2020 and the tireless work of local associations.
This investigation into the fate of children and babies who died in the Saint-Maurice l'Ardoise camp, between the end of 1962 and 1964, had in particular revealed a police report drawn up in 1979 and attesting that the authorities of the time knew the existence of this cemetery.
These authorities had deliberately decided not to inform associations and families.
