The French president, Emmanuel Macron, honored on Thursday, October 17, the memory of the Algerians killed or injured during the independence demonstrations of October 17, 1961. “unforgivable acts for the Republic”while asking “draw the future” Franco-Algerian relations, still tense.
“On October 17, 1961, the Algerian demonstration was repressed under the authority of Maurice Papon. France remembers the dead, the wounded, the victims. “Of these unforgivable acts for the Republic”declared the head of state in his account X, at 63 years old.my anniversary of these demonstrations in Paris.
According to historians, in addition to numerous injuries, between thirty and two hundred protesters were killed and their bodies thrown into the Seine, during these abuses committed under the authority of the prefect Papon. These Algerians were demonstrating for the independence of their country.
Unprecedented gesture
The president’s position has not changed since his 2021 speech, where he acknowledged, in a press release published by the Elysée, that “ “the crimes committed that night under the authority of Maurice Papon” were “ unforgivable for the republic ».
In an unprecedented gesture for a French head of state, Macron also participated in a tribute on the banks of the Seine, near the Bezons bridge. If it was an undeniable step forward compared to the silence and caution of his predecessors in the Elysée; For the activists of the memory of October 17, 1961, the president had not gone far enough to reduce responsibility for this “ repression » to Papón.
“With lucidity, we look history in the face, to shape the future”added the French president, in what appears to be a hand extended to his Algerian counterpart, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, a few days before a state visit to Morocco at the end of October.
Because diplomatic relations between France and Algeria have become tense since the announcement of reinforced support from Paris for the Moroccan autonomy plan for Western Sahara. This former Spanish colony is de facto controlled mainly by Morocco, but is claimed by the Sahrawi separatists of the Polisario Front, supported by Algiers.
On Thursday, the Human Rights League called in a statement “the full recognition of this dark episode of our colonial past”regretting that “Its full recognition as a State crime has not yet occurred”. The LDH called a demonstration at 6:00 p.m. “on the Saint-Michel bridge, which was one of the main places of this massacre”.
