I was born a few months before the signing of these famous Evian agreements (March 18, 1962) which marked the history of the two countries and ended the terrible war of Algeria. A war which is the consequence of decades of injustices, inequality and lack of rights for the “natives” relegated to the status of second -class citizens. A war that has not been recognized as such, but presented as the repression of outlaws. A war which made hundreds of thousands of victims, first among the independence and the Algerian civilians who supported them, but also among the French soldiers – many of whom were called – and among the Algerians enlisted as harkis by the army French, that their personal and family history had often put in an insoluble situation. A partly fratricidal war, completed in particular by harkis massacres which have often reached the paroxysm of horror and created wounds always open on the two banks of the Mediterranean.
In both countries, recognizing the entire colonial past implies looking at these realities in the face. Let us hope that the official visit in Algeria of the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, from August 25 to 27, that is to say the opportunity for advances on this subject in France as in Algeria.
What link with my support for the pantheonization of Gisèle Halimi you will say to me? Precisely, this measure would be for France an advance. It would be an official tribute to a feminist also engaged in the fight of the peoples to have themselves. From 1956, she was the lawyer for Algerian separatists and then denounced the tortures practiced by the army. She clearly displayed her anti -colonialism and in particular led a fight for the defense of Djamila Boupacha, an independence activist accused of attempted assassination, tortured and raped during her detention by soldiers of the French army.
The stigma of colonization
Let us not forget that the military conquest initiated by General Bugeaud in the XIX e century showed the permanence of the military strategy of the French army consisting in enlisting natives as auxiliary. The conquest of Algeria caused the spoliation of more than 2 million hectares to the “Muslim natives”, provoking famine, diseases and destruction of a whole social system and, in the end, the disappearance of a large part of the population of the population Aboriginal. It is this colonialism – which is indeed the basis of all these injustices of which our ancestors were victims – that Gisèle Halimi fought, and it would be important for France to pay tribute to him.
You have 46.46% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.