The head of state commemorated on Saturday the night during which at least 120 Algerians were killed by the police during a demonstration in Paris.
Le Monde with AFP
Sixty years later, Emmanuel Macron commemorated Saturday, October 16th, the bloody night of October 17, 1961, during which at least 120 Algerians were killed by the French police during a demonstration in Paris.
The head of state “recognized the facts: the crimes committed that night under the authority of Maurice Papon are inexcusable for the Republic, and then noted a statement from the Elysée.
“The repression was brutal, violent, bloody. Nearly 12,000 Algerians were arrested and transferred to sorting centers at the Coubertin Stadium, the Palais des Sports and other places. In addition to many wounded, several tens were killed, their bodies thrown into the Seine. Many families have never found the remains of their loved ones, disappeared that night. The President of the Republic honors the memory of all the victims. “
The head of state went to deposit, in the middle of the afternoon, a sheaf on the banks of the Seine, at the height of the bridge of Bezons, in the suburbs of Paris. This bridge had been borrowed sixty years ago by the Algerian protesters who arrived from Nanterre’s neighboring bidonville to the appeal of the FLN branch installed in France.
In 2012, the predecessor of Mr. Macron, François Hollande, had mentioned a “bloody repression”, in 2012, in a statement.
TENDED BACKGROUND
Afterwards the report of the historian Benjamin Stora on colonization and the Algerian war (1954-62), the head of state had committed to participate “in three commemorative and emblematic days “: The first took place around September 25, National Harkis Tribute Day, the second this Saturday and the third on March 19th for the 60th anniversary of Evian agreements that ended the Algerian war . “France must recognize this tragedy as an inexcusable tragedy, as a kind of crime that has been decided”, had estimated a little earlier, Saturday, Benjamin Stora on Europe 1 and CNews. “There is a state responsibility under the authority of Maurice Papon”, then prefect of police from Paris.
This ceremony takes place in a context stretched between Paris and Algiers, after the words of Mr. Macron reported by Le Monde, October 2nd. The French President accused the Algerian “politico-military” system to maintain a “memorial annuity” by serving for his people an “official story” who “does not rely on truths”.
At the Elysée, we assure that “whatever the state of our relations with Algeria and whatever the positions of the Algerian authorities on the question, we do it for ourselves, not for reasons Franco-Algerian “.
The head of state, who has undertaken unpublished memory on the war of Algeria, wants above all to “look at the story in front”, as he did in Rwanda recognizing “responsibilities “From France to the Genocide of Tutsi of 1994.” But that does not mean rewriting the story or reinvent it “, warns the Elysee.
“The President of the Republic has decided to carry out this memorial battle in a methodical and organized way. There was Maurice Audin, Ali Boumendjel, forgiveness to the Harkis … We have more advanced on the memorial site in a few months as In sixty years, “says Stora.