Algeria calls on France to admit colonial crimes

[QueEx]

<font size="5"><center>Algeria calls on France to admit colonial crimes</font size></center>

Bahrain Tribune
August 27, 2005

SETIF, Algeria: Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has again urged France to admit it tortured and killed Algerians during colonial rule. Algeria and France are gradually normalising ties and hope to sign a friendship treaty by the end of the year similar to the 1963 Franco-German reconciliation treaty.

The North African state has stepped up demands for France to recognise the mistakes and wrongs of colonial rule, which ended in 1962 after a bloody war of independence.

“This is to remind our friends in France that there is no alternative but to recognise they made mistakes, they tortured and killed our people,” Bouteflika told thousands of supporters yesterday in the city of Setif, which suffered French repression in 1945.

Algeria says France massacred 45,000 Algerians who took to the streets to demand independence as Europe celebrated victory over Nazi Germany on May 8, 1945.

“People in this city (Setif) know better than anyone else what happened during the events of May 8, 1945, when Algerian people took to the streets to celebrate victory of the allies ... everybody knows how occupation forces received our people. They massacred them and killed them,” Bouteflika said.
Many Algerian political figures and historians say the massacres of May 8, 1945 were genocide and want compensation.

Colonial French forces launched an air and ground offensive against several eastern cities in response to anti-French riots which killed some 100
Europeans.

According to the Algerian state, some 45,000 people died in the crackdown. European historians put the number at 15,000-20,000.

Bouteflika urged Islamic militants yesterday to lay down their arms but said that Algeria will not offer an amnesty to everyone in exchange for ending more than a decade of violence.

Human rights groups and families of victims of the conflict that has engulfed Algeria since 1992 fear a partial amnesty due to be voted on in a referendum on September 29 would result in the pardon of Islamists who killed civilians and soldiers.

“I extend my hand to those who are in the mountains to lay down their arms but I stress that there will be no general amnesty,” Bouteflika said.
The president is campaigning across the North African country ahead of a national referendum on whether a partial amnesty should be given to hundreds of armed militants.

Bouteflika says the “charter for peace and national reconciliation” will exclude militants involved in massacres, rape and explosions in public places. But legal proceedings will be dropped against rebels who had surrendered and against some still at large if they handed themselves in.

This is the third attempt by Algerian authorities to bring to an end an Islamic militant uprising which has cost 150,000-200,000 lives. Two previous laws gave exemption from prosecution for rebels and saw thousands surrender. The insurgency in Algeria began when the army stepped in and cancelled elections a now-banned radical Islamic party – the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) – was poised to win in 1992.

http://www.bahraintribune.com/ArticleDetail.asp?CategoryId=2&ArticleId=80766

 

[Dolemite]

good post- people forget those frog eaters did a whole lot of racist scumbag shit and that iraq highsignin is just a front

 

[mr_magic]

Nice article, QueEx. Not that many people know about the issues that exist vis a vis Algeria and France. Much as India was considered the crown jewel in the British Empire, Algeria was seen as the one colony France could not let go...which is one of the main reasons why France perpetrated the crimes that they did. I'm no Francophile, but I hope that France has the werewhital to do the right thing and acknowledge the issue. But seeing the way French politics has gone lately, I doubt that shall happen.

 

[Greed]

the french is everyone's enemy, except for saddam.

 

[Spectrum]

Not specifically related to the first post..but you guys should check out a film called the "battle for algiers" It's an old flick but really good. It reran in art houses around the country after 9/11 because of the relevant material. It was a good flick:

taken from Amazon.com
Director Gillo Pontecorvo's 1966 movie The Battle of Algiers concerns the violent struggle in the late 1950s for Algerian independence from France, where the film was banned on its release for fear of creating civil disturbances. Certainly, the heady, insurrectionary mood of the film, enhanced by a relentlessly pulsating Ennio Morricone soundtrack, makes for an emotionally high temperature throughout. Decades later, the advent of the "war against terror" has only intensified the film's relevance.
Shot in a gripping, quasi-documentary style, The Battle of Algiers uses a cast of untrained actors coupled with a stern voiceover. Initially, the film focuses on the conversion of young hoodlum Ali La Pointe (Brahim Haggiag) to F.L.N. (the Algerian Liberation Front). However, as a sequence of outrages and violent counter-terrorist measures ensue, it becomes clear that, as in Eisenstein's October, it is the Revolution itself that is the true star of the film.

Pontecorvo balances cinematic tension with grimly acute political insight. He also manages an evenhandedness in depicting the adversaries. He doesn't flinch from demonstrating the civilian consequences of the F.L.N.'s bombings, while Colonel Mathieu, the French office brought in to quell the nationalists, is played by Jean Martin as a determined, shrewd, and, in his own way, honorable man. However, the closing scenes of the movie--a welter of smoke, teeming street demonstrations, and the pealing white noise of ululations--leaves the viewer both intellectually and emotionally convinced of the rightfulness of the liberation struggle. This is surely among a handful of the finest movies ever made. --David Stubbs