Algeria remembers mass killings under French rule
ALGIERS: Algeria on Saturday honoured thousands killed by French forces in 1945, as the North African country waits for Paris to apologise for its colonialera crimes.
Pro-independence protests broke out after a rally on May 8, 1945 marking the allied victory over Nazi Germany.
The rioting triggered two weeks of bloody repression in which French troops massacred thousands of mostly unarmed Muslim civilians, a key chapter in Algeria’s long independence struggle.
On Saturday, thousands of people took part in a march of remembrance following the same route through the northeastern city of Setif as the May 8 rally 76 years ago, official media reported.
Led by scouts, participants laid a wreath at a monument to Bouzid Saal, a 22-year-old man shot dead by a French policeman in 1945 for refusing to lower his Algerian flag — the first casualty of the violence.
French ambassador Francois Gouyette also laid a wreath in honour of the victims, on behalf of President Emmanuel Macron.
The 1945 crackdown led by French General Raymond Duval left as many as 45,000 dead, according to Algerian official figures.
French historians put the toll at up to 20,000, including 86 European civilians and 16 soldiers killed in revenge attacks.
The killings had a transformative impact on the nascent anti-colonial movement, setting the scene for a fullblown independence war nine years later that finally led to independence in 1962.
Algerian officials have continued to call for a full apology from France for its colonial-era policies.
President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said Saturday that Algeria’s “excellent relations with the French republic cannot exist outside of history,” adding that demands for France to deal with the legacy of colonialism “can never be renounced”.
He has previously described the 1945 killings as “crimes against humanity”.
Government spokesman Ammar Belhimer called for “the official, definitive and comprehensive recognition by France of its crimes (along with) repentance and fair compensation”.
He also called for help dealing with the toxic waste left behind by 17 nuclear tests France carried out in the Algerian desert in the 1960s.
The summer of 1945 saw French forces carry out a 15-day campaign of violence around Setif, 300 kilometres east of Algiers.
French authorities, which had occupied and colonised the North African country since 1830, imposed martial law and indiscriminately massacred women, children and the elderly.
Nationalist leaders were detained on pure suspicion, and villages suspected of harbouring separatists were strafed by the air force and set ablaze.
Some 44 villages were destroyed.
Executions continued until November 1945, and some 4,000 people were arrested.
Setif remains a highly sensitive episode for Algerians as well as for some in France. — AFP