France to launch commission to review its sensitive colonial history in Algeria

France will establish a “memories and truth” commission to review the country’s colonial history in Algeria, following a key recommendation in a new, much-anticipated report commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron and released Wednesday.

The report presented a series of other proposals to address longstanding grievances. But it ruled out issuing an official apology for the past, and the proposals avoided the question of systemic torture by French forces, which Macron has already acknowledged.

In a statement issued late Wednesday, Macron’s office said that he would create a Memories and Truth Commission as recommended. In addition, it said, three ceremonies to be organized by the French government in 2021 and 2022 will pay tribute to Algerians who fought on opposite sides of the war and to the agreement that led to Algeria’s independence in 1962.

The report was written by the French historian Benjamin Stora, who will now head the commission. He said the report focused on a series of concrete actions to “lift the lid” on a range of issues left behind by France’s colonial past and the Algerian War.

In commissioning the report, Macron has ventured onto sensitive territory where the past six French presidents were reluctant to go.

The French colonial past in Algeria is a trauma that continues to shape modern France, with nostalgia on the right and resentment among the European country’s large Muslim population. The millions of residents in France who, to varying degrees, have ties to Algeria have competing memories of colonial history and the war, making an official clarification politically risky.

The truth of the Algerian War lay buried for decades. Sixty years after the 195462 war ended and the curtain came down on 132 years of French colonization in Algeria, the issue of France’s colonial past has set off debates on the integration of French Muslims, many of whom are of Algerian descent.

Stora, the historian, suggested a series of about 30 measures, including the conversion of internment camps for Algerians in France into memorial sites and the overhaul of French school curricula to improve teaching of the history of France in Algeria.

But the report also advises against officially apologizing for the past, arguing that concrete actions are more efficient for promoting reconciliation. Macron’s office Wednesday said there would be “no repentance nor apologies” for France’s occupation of Algeria.