France envisages “symbolic acts” in relation to the crimes committed during the period of colonization and the Algerian war, but announces that there will be “neither repentance nor apology,” announced the Élysée Palace on Wednesday in a statement.
More than 60 years after the end of the Algerian War (1954-1962), relations between Paris and Algiers remain tense because of the crimes committed by France during colonization and the eight years of the Algerian War of Independence after 130 years of French colonization.
Macron is the first president of the French Republic born after the end of the Algerian war. He had entrusted the historian Benjamin Stora to give him a report on colonization and the Algerian war, a report that was delivered to the Elysée Palace on Wednesday.
The historian recommended, in particular, the creation of a “Memory and Truth” commission in France, charged with proposing “common initiatives between France and Algeria on issues of memory” in order to reconcile the two shores of the Mediterranean, but ruled out the need for any apology to the Algerians.
Emmanuel Macron will take part in three days of commemorations as part of the 60th anniversary of the end of the Algerian War in 1962.
Algeria has repeatedly asked in Paris to apologize to the Algerians for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during colonization.
Contrary to his predecessors who totally denied the crimes committed by France in Algeria, Emmanuel Macron acknowledged in September 2018 that France had put in place a “system” leading to acts of “torture” during the Algerian war, but he refrained from apologizing.
France and Algeria have been pursuing negotiations for four years on four historic issues without achieving any results. First, Algeria demands, among other things, the sharing of archives from the colonial period (1830-1962), but Paris has always rejected this request from Algiers.
Secondly, Algeria demands the repatriation of the skulls of all Algerian resistance fighters preserved in France.
The third dossier concerns the demand for compensation for the victims of the atomic tests that France carried out in the Algerian Sahara between 1960 and 1966, while the last dossier concerns the unknown fate of 2,200 Algerian resistance fighters reported missing during the 1954-1962 war. During this war, 60,000 combatants and more than one million Algerian civilians were killed by France.
by Basit Abbasi – CCTV