Algeria -

The Algerian liberation revolution (1954-1962) witnessed prominent stations classified by historians among the pivotal events that made its course and its final fate, due to its resonance and its military, popular and diplomatic consequences.

Among those major events were the events of October 17, 1961, in the French capital, Paris, in which the Algerian immigrants were the heroes, which occurred in conjunction with the "Evian negotiations" to restore national sovereignty.

Interrelated developments paved the way for it. In September 1961, the French security services arrested and expelled hundreds of Algerians and arrested others at the Vansan Center, according to historian Abdelkader Khelifi.

The Paris police statement on the 23rd of the same month indicates that 29,000 Algerian expatriates were subjected to inspection, 600 others were arrested, and 200 were expelled to Algeria, according to the Algerian Historical Journal (June 2019 issue).

On October 5, 1961, the Minister of the Interior, Roger Frey, accompanied by Paris Police Governor Maurice Papon, issued a racist decree banning the roaming of Algerian workers in Paris and its suburbs.

This came against the background of "the success of the Algerian revolution diplomatically, the successive emergence of creditors from the French circles, its ability to organize and direct Algerian workers and obtaining funds, and the diversion of weapons to Algeria," as the researcher asserts.

Abdul Majeed Sheikhi: The events in Paris represent a crime of a state claiming civilization and sophistication (Al-Jazeera)

Algerian reaction

However, revolution officials abroad did not stand idly by in front of these measures, as the Federal Committee of the National Liberation Front met and unanimously agreed on the inevitability of confronting and breaking racist instructions.

The committee decided that popular demonstrations of immigrants would take place during two consecutive nights after eight o'clock in the evening, quietly and orderly on the main roads of Paris.

On that day, about 80,000 Algerian expatriates went out in huge peaceful demonstrations to respond to the restrictions of the French authorities, and to express their absolute support for the Liberation Front and its demands for freedom and independence.

Meanwhile, the French police responded with severe repression, killing, torture and throwing from the famous Seine bridges, until the bodies floated over the area.

Mujahid Ali Haroun documents in his memoirs cases of killing by beatings, gunshots, drowning and other methods, that 200 martyrs and 2300 wounded were counted, of whom were transported to Algerian soil on board a special ship for this purpose, to be placed in camps (the French occupation followed the policy of assembling the population in something similar Mass detentions to prevent revolutionaries from communicating with the people).

President Francois Hollande admitted in 2012 the bloody repression of protesters, and Emmanuel Macron tweeted in 2018 that "October 17, 1961 was a day of violent repression, and the French Republic is required to face the facts about the massacres of Algerians in Paris."

Algeria celebrates officially and popularly every year the tragic events under the title "National Migration Day", and Benjamin Stura suggested to his President Macron - within the memory paper - to continue the French celebration symbolically to commemorate its facts.

French soldiers walking with Algerian prisoners in 1956 during the era of the Algerian liberation revolution (Getty)

Strategic gains for the revolution

On the other hand, the demonstrations constituted a strategic gain for the Algerian revolution.

According to the historian, Lazhar Badida, it represented a great victory, by aborting Charles de Gaulle's claims that the Algerians were linked to France and its institutions and were not loyal to the Liberation Front.

He explained - in a statement to Al Jazeera Net - that the demonstrations eliminated "the round-table negotiations, where the Liberation Front represents the Algerians with other political forces", just as the idea of ​​"French Algeria" was dropped, to prove that the latter belongs to its people and indigenous people, and the settlers do not participate in it.

The revolution achieved its effective and influential presence at the level of French public opinion by putting pressure internally and externally on de Gaulle, to continue negotiations with the leadership of the revolution more seriously, as it was resumed after 10 days in the Swiss city of Basel.

"The FLN's regional and international action resulted in the issuance of a UN list on November 15, 1961 to determine the fate of the Algerian people," Badida adds.

Lazhar Badida, the demonstrations brought down de Gaulle's plans and imposed on him the independence negotiations (Al-Jazeera)

International newspapers also reported news of the demonstrations, denouncing the brutality of the repression against Algerians, as was written by Jean Farijo in the pages of France Soir, as well as journalist Pierre Fonso Ponte in Le Monde and Le Figaro newspapers.

As for the people, the revolution - and the speech of the historian himself - has proven that it "is in control and influential in the general Algerian people, whether inside or outside the country, especially in France, and that immigrants in it are an integral part of the Algerians who live their pain and carry their hopes, and French politics will not differentiate between them wherever they are."

state crime

On the other hand, Mujahid Abdul Majeed Sheikhi described the events as a crime of a state that claims civilization and sophistication and adopts all human rights statements and charters.

Chikhi - an advisor to the Presidency of the Republic for National Memory - confirmed that "the Algerians went out on the streets of Paris unarmed, with nothing but their voices, which were quickly silenced by thugs who had previously killed 45,000 martyrs in the May 1945 events."

He told Al Jazeera Net that Maurice Papon did not hesitate to suppress, kill and drown hundreds of Algerians, while his country issued the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1789) and signed the Charter of the United Nations (1945) and the Geneva Conventions (1949), which are the basis of international humanitarian law, before striking it. All of this was abandoned on October 17, 1961.

Kamal Filali: The treatment of the French authorities was racist and a gross violation of human rights (Al-Jazeera)

For his part, the expert at the United Nations in international law, human rights defender Kamal Filali, considered the decision of the French authorities at the time to be racist, based on discrimination between the French and Algerians residing in Paris and its suburbs, and a flagrant violation of international human rights and the European Convention of 1950.

He classified the facts within genocide, crimes against humanity and torture, stressing that the means of proof require clear and strong evidence against the will of the colonizer to get rid of the Algerians since 1830, and then follow up on legal grounds all the prohibited acts in Nuremberg 1945 and the Rome system.

And he revealed - in a statement to Al Jazeera Net - that the Algerian "Association of May 8, 1945" had filed a lawsuit in France - one of the prominent lawyers in the case - against Maurice Babon as a major active official in the facts.

A complaint was submitted to the Paris prosecutor on January 5, 1998, but the French judiciary kept it, which prompted Algerian lawyers to establish as a civil party in the name of victims and rights holders.

The former Vice-Chairman of the African Union Commission on International Law clarified that he could not define the facts as a crime against humanity that is not imprescriptible in nature, and if it was adapted as a common law crime, it would be exempted by the French laws on exemption of 1962 and 1964.

This was confirmed by the judge of the Indictment Chamber of the Paris Judicial Council in May 1999, and the French Supreme Court, a year later, rejected the appeal in cassation, before filing another case before the European Court of Human Rights, but it rejected it in form.