Journal of Turkish Weekly
May 13 2005
Algeria Asks France to Recognize Algerian Genocide
Algeria asks France to admit its responsibility in genocide-like
massacres and human rights abuses in Algeria before the independence.
“The paradox of the massacres of May 8, 1945, is that when the heroic
Algerian combatants returned from the fronts in Europe, Africa and
elsewhere where they defended France’s honor and interests… the
French administration fired on peaceful demonstrators.” Bouteflika
said in a speech this week.
French colonial forces mounted an air and ground offensive that
lasted for several days against several eastern cities, particularly
Sétif and Guelma, in response to the independence demonstrations. The
Algerian government says the French offensive left 45,000 people dead
in these demonstrations. More than 1.5 million Algerians were killed
in the War of Independence. Many were tortured by the French troops,
however Paris has never officially accepted its responsibility and
never apologized from Algeria. Experts say that France has to
recognize massacres in Algeria, if not genocide and must pay
compensations to Algeria and the families of the victims.
It marks one of the darkest chapters in the history of Algeria and
France, which ruled the North African country brutally from 1830
until 1962.
France’s ambassador to Algeria said in February that the Setif
massacre was an “inexcusable tragedy,” the most explicit comments by
the French state on the event.
“The Algerian people are still waiting for … the declarations of
the ambassador of France to be followed by a more convincing
gesture,” Bouteflika said in his speech.
Several remembrance events were held across oil-rich Algeria, with
more than 20,000 people, including ministers, taking part in a march
on the same route protesters took in Setif in 1945.
The repression sparked the anti-colonial movement and a long war of
independence, costing the lives of 1.5 million Algerians, according
to the government. `Massacres committed in Algeria is one of the most
vivid examples of genocide in the past’ said Dr. Davut Sahiner. `It
was worse than Bosnia masscares or genocide in Hocali’ added Dr.
Sahiner.
“The Algerian people have always been waiting for France to admit the
acts perpetrated during the colonization period and the liberation
war to pave the way for broader and new friendship and cooperation
prospects,” Bouteflika said. However Paris rejects all Algerian calls
and ironically question other countries’ human rights records.
LAND MINES
Algeria also called on international help in removing millions of
land mines France planted along its borders with Morocco and Tunisia
during its war of independence.
“We cannot detect anti-personnel mines with the technical means at
our disposal,” Junior Interior Minister Dahou Ould Kablia told an
international anti-personnel mines conference in Algiers.
Algeria says it has got rid of 8 million French mines but still has
another 3 million to clear.
French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said in an interview published
on Sunday in Algerian daily El Watan that both countries needed to
“look together at the past, in order to overcome the chapter most
painful for our two peoples”, but Barnier did not give any clue
whether France will accept genocide committed in Algeria or not.
French officials do not think that France should pay compensation to
the victims of Algerian Genocide.
After seeing its diplomatic and economic influence over Algeria
weakened in recent years as the United States developed more oil
interests and power in the region, France is trying to regain the
upper hand. France sees the northern Africa as `French influence
area’.
Many Algerian political figures and historians, who call the massacre
genocide, not only want an apology but demand compensation. “Sixty
years later, France does not recognize its crimes against humanity,”
Algerian French-language newspaper La Tribune said on its front page.
TENSION
Accusations from Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika that France
used similar crematoriums in Algeria as were used during the Nazi
regime have caused tension between two countries. “The occupiers had
chosen the way of genocide and termination. This went on during the
fatal occupation process. Who remembers the shameful crematoriums
that the occupiers built in Guelma? Those crematoriums are the same
as the Nazis’ death crematoriums” Bouteflika’s messages were read in
a panel in Setif University.
Muselier, visiting Algeria to negotiate over French graves, gave a
statement in Algeria saying, “Clarifying the realities is the
responsibility of historians and researchers. Both governments have
agreed to encourage research on the issue.” French Foreign Minister
Michel Barnier had also determined formerly that historians should be
encouraged to examine the period. However France had accepted laws
which blame other countries of being committing genocide. French
politicians had argued that Armenian genocide allegations could not
be left to historians. Dr. Mary Somcan says `French attitude is a
clear double-standard’. `France made many massacres in their
colonies. Algerian example is one of the worst one. However French
politicians never accept their responsibility. Strangely they just
question other nations’ mistakes. They blame Americans, British or
Germans. They abuse Armenian issue to prevent Turkey’s EU bid. But it
is understood that their hand are bloody and dirty’.
The French Foreign Ministry announced Wednesday that examining and
overcoming the past in the Algerian war and the colonial period would
provide a common history and they believed that this would bring
France and Algeria closer together. The Ministry said that in
February the Algerian Ambassador in France had described the
incidents as an “unforgivable tragedy and massacre”. No French
President or diplomat mention the word of `genocide’ for the Algerian
Genocide.
Abdulkerim Gazali, editor of the Algerian newspaper La Tribune,
likened France’s occupation of an independent and sovereign Algeria
to Nazi Germany’s occupation of many European countries and claimed
this was racism. “According to which principles do the crimes of the
French colonial period differ from Nazis?” he asked. “How dare France
refuse to give the same rights to Algeria, when France went on
blaming the post-Hitler Germany and demanding penitence from it?”
Compiled by Jan SOYKOK, JTW
News agencies
13 May 2005