Paris (AFP)
Emmanuel Macron presides Monday morning a reception dedicated to the Harkis, to "take a new step" towards the recognition of the responsibility of the State for the suffering of these former combatants alongside the French army during the Algerian War.
This reception is held five days before the national day of homage to the Harkis, which has been celebrated every September 25 since 2003, especially in the south of France where they are very present.
The highlight on Monday will be, at 10:30 am, Emmanuel Macron's speech in which he will "open the repair site", going further than his predecessor François Hollande who, in 2016, had recognized "the responsibilities of French governments in the abandonment of the Harkis ".
"The president considers that the work accomplished for sixty years is important but that it is necessary to take a new step in the recognition of the failure which was made to the Harkis but also to the failure of the French Republic to its own values", explains the Elysium.
"The history of the Harkis is a history of the French and it is the history of the French; it is in this state of mind that we must approach this new chapter," according to the presidency.
The Harkis are these former combatants - up to 200,000 men - recruited as auxiliaries to the French army during the conflict which between 1954 and 1962 opposed Algerian nationalists to France.
At the end of this war, some of them, abandoned by Paris, were victims of reprisals in Algeria.
François Hollande during a ceremony at the Invalides for the national day of homage to the Harkis, September 25, 2016 in Paris IAN LANGSDON POOL / AFP / Archives
Several tens of thousands of others, often accompanied by women and children, were transferred to France, where they were placed in "transit and reclassification camps" with undignified and lasting traumatic living conditions.
- A law demanded -
Since then, "the Republic has taken steps: there have been various compensation procedures installed over time," recalls an adviser to the presidency.
So many gestures deemed insufficient by the Harkis associations, who demand, in an open letter to Emmanuel Macron, that a "law recognizing the abandonment of the Harkis" be voted by "the end of the year".
"We have seen you have the courage to recognize dark pages in our history, on the Algerian war, Rwanda or the nuclear tests in Polynesia. We hope that you will be the one who will end sixty years of a certain hypocrisy consisting in recognizing the abandonment of the Harkis in the speeches but to refuse it in a law ", writes Ajir, Association Justice Information Reparation for the Harkis.
The associations, which say they represent a community of about 400,000 people (Harkis and descendants), are also calling for an increase in existing compensation.
President Emmanuel Macron (d) and historian Benjamin Stora during the submission of his report to promote "the appeasement of memories" around the Algerian war, January 20, 2021 at the Elysee Palace, in Paris CHRISTIAN HARTMANN POOL / AFP
In September 2018, Secretary of State for the Armed Forces Geneviève Darrieussecq presented a "Harkis plan" including the release of 40 million euros over four years to revalue the pensions of veterans and help those of their children who are living. in precariousness.
Emmanuel Macron had announced that he would address the Harkis by receiving in January the report of the historian Benjamin Stora aiming to promote "the appeasement of memories" around the Algerian war, which remains "an open wound" between both shores of the Mediterranean.
During the reception, the president is to decorate Salah Abdelkrim, a representative Harki wounded in combat, a French officer, General François Meyer, who organized the repatriation "of several hundred Harkis by disobeying orders", and a daughter of Harki, Bornia Tarall, "Equal Opportunity and Diversity Activist".
After having taken various initiatives (on Maurice Audin, the opening of the archives or the assassination of lawyer Ali Boumendjel ...), Emmanuel Macron still intends to participate in two memorial days by the end of the five-year term: repression by French police from a demonstration by Algerians in Paris on October 17, 1961, and the signing of the Evian Accords on March 18, 1962, which enshrined the French defeat in Algeria.
So many politically sensitive meetings in the run-up to the presidential election in April 2022 when the Harkis represent an electorate traditionally courted by the National Rally and the right.
© 2021 AFP