He did not recommend an apology for the massacres of France
The Macron Report ... An attempt to whitewash the empire's bloody past in Algeria
Macron receives a report on colonialism and Algeria from historian Benjamin Stora.
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Algeria recovers the remains of 24 Algerian soldiers, who were against French colonialism, for their country Paris executed.
A.F.B.
The atrocities of the French in Algeria are a bleeding wound.
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French colonial soldiers in Algeria.
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France lost the Algerian war, but it still controls the story of history, while refusing to apologize or pay compensation to the Algerians, the old saying that history is written by the victors became the opposite of this meaning in the case of the Algerian War of Independence, and the imperial project that preceded that.
Despite Algeria’s independence from France, the defeated colonialist still seeks to distort the nation’s history. Indeed, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the crushing defeat of France in 1962, this country, responsible for one of the most disgusting events in colonial history, is bent on distorting Narrating the history of the Algerian nation, and to this end, the administration of President Emmanuel Macron issued, days ago, a new report on colonialism and the Algerian war, and firmly adopted a one-sided narrative that supports its claims, and this report tries to explain the causes of turmoil in the relationship between Algeria and France, and offers proposals to strengthen relations Algerian diplomacy, from good general information about colonialism, to the return of looted artifacts to Algeria.
The report is hugely controversial because it fails to recommend an "apology," and despite France's loss of the jewel of its empire after more than a century of deadly oppression, including on-going crimes against humanity, it appears that the French do not believe they were barbaric enough to show any remorse. .
No regrets or apologies
We will not forget the use of napalm and gas chambers that wiped out civilians, the massacre of Algerian protesters in towns and cities, including Paris, and systematic torture, and terrorism carried out by a secretive armed nationalist extremist organization, made up of French police and army officers opposed to the liberation of Algeria.
When presenting the new document, consisting of 146 pages, Macron’s spokesperson insisted that “there will be no remorse or apology.” The explicit political purpose of this statement, ostensibly, was to prevent history from being used for further division, but that is in fact France is allowed to evade responsibility.
The profile of the author of the report appointed by Macron reveals the fact that the report is one-sided.
The historian Benjamin Stora is an academy based in Paris, not Algiers. Moreover, he descended from a family that fled Algeria with hundreds of thousands of European colonists in 1962, and like all of the settlers of European origin, who numbered almost a million, who were known as « Black feet », the Stora family was forced in the end to flee to France to escape from members of the indigenous Arab and Berber communities, who still inhabit Algeria to this day.
Despite this black past, Macron considered that Stora is the appropriate researcher to shed light on a topic that continues to affect those who live in the largest country in Africa in terms of area, and the diaspora, which is estimated at 800,000 immigrants in France, and Stora’s jurisdiction also includes assistance in achieving “ Reconciliation between the French and Algerian peoples », but according to the evidence, this goal is unlikely to be achieved.
Instead of apology, compensation, and the possibility of prosecution, Stora appears to have sought to downplay the importance of brutal crimes that are still fresh in the memory, and the report is also full of manipulation, and this is immediately evident from the introduction to the report, as Stora does not focus on the brutality of the colonial era, but on The recent brutal attacks carried out by the militants in France, referring specifically to heinous crimes that have absolutely nothing to do with Algeria, including the beheading of a teacher by a Russian citizen in a Paris suburb, and three murders of Catholic churchgoers by a Tunisian immigrant in The southern city of Nice.
Educating young people
According to Stora's misleading logic, such atrocities are in fact linked to modern Algeria, and he later explains this uncertain connection, writing that educating Muslim youth about "colonialism and the Algerian war" is a "necessary guarantee" against the spread of "Islamic militancy."
There is certainly tremendous value in teaching facts about the French Empire, as its control over a large part of continental Europe, under the leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte at the beginning of the 19th century, is crucial to understanding modern France, as it is the case for oppression practiced by colonialism in other parts of the world. In other focal points, Stora's distortion is unforgivable.
What Stora is doing is a repetition of Macron’s controversial speech about what he called “the Islamic schism” last October, in which he talked about the “colonial past shocks” of France, especially the Algerian war, “what fuels unspoken discontent” that allegedly leads to the radicalization of youth. And it leads to terrorism.
This populist sentiment - evident in far-right conspiracy theories - claims that terrorism today is directly linked to the angry Algerians, who have been inflicting irreparable violence, as was the case when they resisted French rule.
France Now points out that those who commit evil deeds are in fact driven by what happened to their Algerian parents or grandparents, and this is not only a kind of deception at its most extreme, but it is a fallacy of what the French did to the Algerians for 132 years, since they invaded their homeland for the first time. On the 5th of July 1830.
In this regard, there is a lot of evidence that Stora should have verified, including the killing of about 45,000 Algerian civilians in the cities of Setif, Guelma and Kharata, and the surrounding areas, over the course of a few days in May 1945 alone, for example, and France committed a country Al-Nour, which claims to seek to achieve a "civilized mission" abroad, is a kind of genocide for which it is famous in Algeria.
Militias of the "black feet" joined the bloodbath after the celebration of May 8, Victory Day in Europe at the end of World War II in 1945, turned into a demonstration calling for the independence of Algeria. There were atrocities on both sides, but as usual the French outperformed in the use of weapons and in Utter barbarism.
It was the same type of extermination program that was instigated by the French Governor-General of Algeria in the 1940s, Marshal Thomas Robert Peugeot, whereby Peugeot pledged, in a parliamentary speech, that this scorched earth policy sought to subjugate the Algerians, by gathering "black feet" anywhere "There is fresh water and fertile land in it, without caring for anyone who belongs to that land." He invented gas chambers long before the Nazis, and filled caves with harmful fumes in order to suffocate the "hateful lower class" and "exterminate them from the last of them."
Such mass crimes were typical of a relentless conflict that became a full-scale war in 1954, and Algerians estimate that it claimed the lives of 1.5 million of their citizens, including those fighting with the National Liberation Front. Among the dead were men, women and children who were killed indiscriminately through French bombing.
Napalm bombs - referred to in military terms as "special barrels" - were part of the payloads dropped on civilian societies, while the common method of executing French enemy fighters was to drop them from planes and helicopters.
France also used the southern desert of Algeria as a nuclear test ground, in addition to the 11 million landmines planted by the French in vast areas of the country, killing and maiming tens of thousands of Algerians.
Of the 1.5 million military personnel who were mobilized throughout the war, the French lost about 25,000 soldiers, in addition to up to 3,000 "black feet" militias and up to 150,000 Harkis (the Algerians who cooperated with the colonialists).
Despite their fighting for France, many of them ended up being treated by France with the same brutality that the FLN was subjected to, and after the war France abandoned many of those who had been carrying out reprisals for its benefit in Algeria, or were arrested in filthy camps in France. .
France used the same tactics of colonial suppression in Algeria, when as many as 300 Algerians who participated in a peaceful pro-independence demonstration were shot, beaten and tortured to death, or drowned in the Seine River in Paris, many of them in plain sight.
Historians described this massacre as “the bloodiest act used by a state to suppress street protests in Western Europe, in recent history,” the fact that no trial was ever held, and everything points to secrecy and cover-up.
The former president, Charles de Gaulle, who led France during World War II while in exile, was considered a traitor by French nationalists, for recognizing in 1959 the right of Algerians to self-determination.
Regarding the available information about Algeria, Stora was not able to obtain it completely. The executioners of France were always protected. Until 1999 the French government still called the war in Algeria "operations to maintain order", or just "events", so the problem is It lies in acknowledging existing evidence rather than "finding" it.
The French have the full archives, but they object to all of them being disclosed, and not much has been done to solve this problem related to files classified as "state secrets."
The Algerian government asked the Director General of the National Center for Algerian Archives, Abdel Majid Cheikhy, to conduct a special investigation, along with Stora, and to fully restore the colonial archive from Paris. Many in the French National Front party refuse to disclose confidential information, and the "Front" party is an extremist right-wing party founded Jean-Marie Le Pen, a veteran of Algeria, has been linked to torture.
Nabila Ramdani: Algerian journalist, columnist and broadcaster specializing in French politics
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The mass crimes typical of relentless conflict has
become a
full -
scale war
In 1954, the Algerians estimate that it claimed the lives of 1.5 million of their citizens,
Including those fighting with the National Liberation Front, he was among the dead
Men, women and children were randomly killed.
France used colonial repression tactics in Algeria itself when as many as 300 Algerians who participated in a peaceful pro-independence demonstration were shot, beaten and tortured to death, or were drowned by the Seine River in Paris, many of them in plain sight.
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