Macron Reveals more Torture by the French army in Algeria war
President Emmanuel Macron met with four grandchildren of an Algerian independence fighter to tell them that Ali Boumendjel had been tortured and killed by French soldiers in 1957.
It was a further step in Macron’s efforts to reconcile France with its colonial past while offering an outstretched hand to Algeria, which France held for 132 years.
In a statement Tuesday night, the presidential Elysee Palace said Macron wants to give the families of the disappeared on both sides of the Mediterranean “the means to know the truth.”
Macron is the first French president born after the end of Algeria’s brutal seven-year war of independence in 1962, and he had vowed to confront the mistakes of the colonial era and end the two countries’ still rancorous relationship.
Algeria occupied a special place among the colonial conquests of France, becoming an integral part of France like other French regions.
While Algerians make up a large portion of immigrants in France, the North African country harbors the enmity of the years of colonization that culminated in the war, its brutal secrets locked away in archives that Macron said he is gradually trying to reopen.
“No crime, no atrocity committed by anyone during the Algerian War can be excused or concealed,” the Elysee statement said.
“They must meet with courage and lucidity, with absolute respect for those whose lives were shattered by them and whose destinies were broken.” France’s attempt to seek reconciliation is part of a wider movement to acknowledge the dark past of nations, especially in the United States, where Civil War-era statues honoring the heroes of the south are being torn down. they defended slavery. Macron has said he is opposed to removing statues to erase history.
He has also said that he does not want to apologize to Algeria, even though he surprised everyone when he said while campaigning for the presidency that he won in 2017, that the colonization of France was a “crime against humanity.”
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said last year that his country is still waiting for an official apology.
A report commissioned by Macron from historian Benjamin Stora, considered France’s leading expert on Algeria, said that the “excesses of a culture of repentance” do not contribute to confronting the past.
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