jim555 (clôturé)
il y a 12 ans
CRIMES PAR GUILLOTINE:
16 février 1843 /Alger/ Abdelkader ben Zelouf ben Dahman/ Exécuté place Bab-el-Oued
30 mars 1872 /Alger/ Mohamed ben Abdallah
24 janvier 1873 /Alger/ Mohamed-ben-Amor-ben-Derach et Sliman-ben-Si-Mohamed-ben-el-Draoui
09 mai 1873 /Alger/ Boudjenah ben Hamed, El Hadj hamed ben Dahman et Sliman ben Hamed
13 novembre 1873/Oued-Atmenia /Mohammed Chérif
02 octobre 1875 /Tlemcen /Si ben Ali Ould si l'Habid ben Mansour
29 mai 1876 /Constantine /Ali Ou El-Hadj Tua sa femme
15 août 1884 /L'Alma Ali-ben-Touati
08 septembre 1885/Alger /Francisco Arcano 1
18 juin 1886 /Sidi-Bel-Abbès/Messaoud Ould el Arbi
septembre 1886 /Alger /Ahmed-ben-Mohamed Ouali
02 octobre 1886 /Saint-Denis du Sig/Miloud ben Lemna et El Hadj Bouazza
16 août 1887 /Souh-Ahras /Mohamed ben Elhana et Taïb ben Tahar el Euchi Satyres
14 mars 1888 /Alger /Amar Naït Noussa
29 mai 1888 /Bône /Amar ben Mohamed
03 septembre 1888/Alger /El Hadef ben Amar
17 septembre 1888/Sidi-Bel-Abbès/Embareck ben Salem
20 février 1889 /Morris/Mahmoud ben Embareck Bouktaïa
27 avril 1889/Tunis/Ali ben Déba, Mohamed ben Salah et Ali ben Salah
16 août 1889/Mascara/Hamza Ould el Hadj
10 mai 1890/Sidi-Bel-Abbès/Mohamed Ould Boubeker
18 septembre 1890/Palestro/El Foud'hil ben Ismaïl ben Bakhir
19 janvier 1891/Isserville/Amor Noli Amon Aïssa Allouech et Ali Mohammed Namar Aïssa
05 février 1892 /Sousse/Ali ben Belgacem Oudiani et Ali ben Bechir Soufi
01 février 1893 /Chebli /Trois indigènes
11 février 1893 Boufarik/Ben Aïssa ben Mohamed
01 septembre 1893/El Kantara/ben Toujton, ben Bridi et ben Kadi
09 octobre 1893 Oran Kaddour Ould Abdallah
17 août 1894 Soukhara Berhat ben Rabah, Mohamed ben Rabah et Raouki el Hammed
03 septembre 1894 Oran Mazar Abdelkader Ouldari
06 septembre 1894 Batna Seklavamar, Bekouchi Mahmed ben Mohamed, Bouzegahia ben Mohamed, Ajakoub Salabeniken, Ben Feraï ben Saïd Ben Belkassen
15 septembre 1894 Oran Alhadj ben Ahmou et Mohammed ben Abderrhamane
18 février 1895 Bougie Mohammed ouk Assa et Abdelli ben Raïd
14 mai 1895 Azazga Ahmed Namar, Ali Ouel Hadj Karli, Mohammed Ouiddir, Amakran, Abdoun, Areski 04 février 1895
07 avril 1896 Alger Privitera
16 mai 1896 Mascara Embarek
14 juillet 1896 Oran
19 janvier 1897 Alger Egéa
28 mai 1897 Constantine
1899 Saint-Denis du Sig Bouzian et sept complices
mai 1900 Sétif Triple exécution
13 mai 1906 Mostaganem Boudali Mohamed
juin 1906 Bougie Mohammed Amakran ben Saïd
04 août 1909 Alger Boucheriguène
1909 Nour Bouchta et deux hommes
21 février 1910 Alger Nekouch ben Amor
24 mai 1910 Alger Juan Vidal Commit un triple assassinat 02 mars 1910
août 1910 Deux hommes
20 septembre 1910 Oran Kara Miloud ben Sariah et Saïd Mohammed ben Moussa
10 octobre 1910 Berrouaghia Ben Saïd Mohamed ben Larbi
31 octobre 1910 Philippeville Ben Abdezarag Chabane
14 janvier 1911 Orléansville Ben Bali Larbi ben Kalifa
08 septembre 1911 Bone Mesroughé Tahar
05 février 1912 Batna Boukhalfa Ahmed Meharek 23 ans
28 octobre 1913 Alger
23 janvier 1914 Sétif Abdallah Ferathia
30 juillet 1919 Batna Ayadi bou Djema ben Saad et Saïd Mohamed ben Ahmed
26 août 1919 Alger Boulemzab Ali ben Amor
24 septembre 1919 Alger Aonino Ihman et Assoul Mohammed
24 avril 1920 Alger Une double exécution
23 octobre 1920 Batna Soukri bel Kacem et Koraichi ben Saïd
13 mars 1921 Casablanca? Ali-Hakim ben Mohamed
15 juillet 1921 Tlemcen Ben Aïssa ben Amar
11 avril 1922 Azazga Une double exécution
20 octobre 1922 Sétif Makdar et Belbouzidi
21 octobre 1922 Bône Adadia Mohamed et Aïssa ben Ahmed
27 juin 1923 Oran Une quadruple exécution
02 août 1923 Duvivier Zenk Ammar
28 octobre 1924 Alger Mohamed Belkadi
23 mars 1926 Alger Une double exécution
27 avril 1926 Tunis Une exécution
16 août 1926 Tizi-Ouzou Une exécution
juin 1927 Alger
23 juin 1928 Chanzy Tomi Mohamed
23 août 1928 Casablanca (Maroc) Moktar Ben Hadj et Bou Djemaa Ben Ali
14 octobre 1931 Alger Farhi Ali ben Abdelkader et Derrouazi Fjelloui ben Mohammed
07 octobre 1932 Miliana
08 octobre 1932 Orléansville
04 octobre 1934 Brazzaville Yaffara
29 décembre 1938 Oran Aaron Zaoui, Fahar Mohamed et Nour Tahad
18 mars 1939 Oran Abdelkader Bouledja 09 décembre 1938
18 avril 1939 Bougie Saïd Uzi Ougdal 09 février 1939
08 juin 1939 Philippeville Bouzid Belkacem Dernière exécution publique en Algérie 24 février 1939
20 août 1939 Philippeville Rahmani Zihana ben Ahmed
08 mai 1941 Orléansville Eugène Cavert
24 mai 1941 Bougie Malek Mohamed
21 novembre 1944 Oran Un indigène
26 avril 1945 Alger Un indigène
1946
1946
1946
1946
1946
1946
14 janvier 1947 Constantine Ramani Mohamed ben Ameur
02 juillet 1947 Batna Benssaoud Zayeb
juillet 1947 Sétif Un indigène
08 juillet 1947 Blida Hamsi Mohamed
juillet 1947 Batna Un indigène
16 septembre 1947 Ben Mimoun
20 septembre 1947 Yébias Mohand
18 novembre 1947 Alger Sliman Bellouniès
27 janvier 1948 Batna Gondjil Belkacem
03 avril 1948 Alger Un indigène
10 avril 1948 Bel-Abbès Madeleine Mouton
17 juin 1948 Alger Ameziane Areski ben Mohamed
26 juin 1948 Guelma Aouïcha Abdallah et Aber Naceur ben Mohammed
01 juillet 1948 Alger Belkacir Adelkader
14 août 1948 Tunis Abdallah ben Mabrouk, Abderhamman ben Smida, Braïk ben Abbech, Mtir ben Djeddidi
10 novembre 1948 Sétif Achouri ben Embarek
23 novembre 1948 Sfax (Tunisie) Mohammed ben Amor
27 novembre 1948 Bône Loudjani Larbi
16 avril 1949 Constantine Ali ben Amor et Mohammed ben Amor Frères.
14 mai 1949 Sétif Boubekeur Saïd ben Lakdar
07 février 1950 Sousse (Tunisie) Un Tunisien
01 mars 1950 Alger Mohamed Gamouche
27 avril 1951 Constantine Chérif Fertane
22 janvier 1952 Alger Mansour Belkarouil
03 avril 1952 Tunis Mohamed ben Alouane et Abdelaziz ben Ammar
09 avril 1952 Batna Moussa Bouzidi Trois
30 avril 1952 Tizi-Ouzou Amar Kelfaoui
17 juillet 1952 Sétif Ahmed Yahi
23 octobre 1952 Tizi-Ouzou Iouadaren Sept assassinats
17 novembre 1953 Sousse (Tunisie) Tayeb el Saïssi
11 février 1954 Oran Omar Belkini
28 avril 1954 Sfax Mohamed ben Younes, Mohamed ben Hamed, Salah ben Mohamed
05 janvier 1955 Alger Boudjemah Les frères Boudjemah, marocains,
14 juin 1955 Sousse (Tunisie) Meurtrier du curé de Kairouan
04 août 1955 Blida Ladjalli Benhada Assassina son neveu de 11 ans
19 juin 1956 Alger Ahmed Zahane et Adbelkader Ferradj Première exécution des "terroristes" du FLN
03 juillet 1956 Oran Laïb ben Mohammed
07 août 1956 Constantine Mahmed Belkhaïria
09 août 1956 Alger Mohamed Tifrouine
04 décembre 1956 Oran Abdelkader Boumelik
13 décembre 1956 Constantine Abdelhamid Nacerdine
29 décembre 1956 Oran Kaddour ben Rabah Criminel de droit commun
02 janvier 1957 Constantine Mohammed Saadia et Badbir Hadjadj
24 janvier 1957 Constantine Rabah Bouchaïba
02 février 1957 Constantine Hamid Benmaliamed, Mérabet Mohamed, Laoubi Saïd, Zenfaya Hamouda
07 février 1957 Oran Ykhlef Benchetouf, Benttayed Mohamed, Gaoual Benhammar, Boucherika Ahmed et Kebdani Miloud
09février 1957 Alger Mohammed Ouennoui, Mohammed Lakhnèche et Fernard Iveton Terroristes
13 février 1957 Constantine Zaïdi Amor, Arif Fehrat, Layachi Mohamed et Boumlika Allous
14 février 1957 Oran Ahmed Ammou
19 février 1957 Alger Mohammed Mazica
21 février 1957 Constantine Salah Boulkéroua et Mestak Mohammed
02 mars 1957 Constantine Mared Belkacem et Choufi Mohamed
04 mars 1957 Alger Mohamed Larbi ben M'Hidi
18 mars 1957 Constantine Abdel Madjib, Djelbar Septi, Brahamia Rabah
19 mars 1957 Oran Mohammed Resioni
08 avril 1957 Alger Rabouche Saïd, Ames Manseri et Louni Areski
10 avril 1957 Oran Harmou Mokhtar, Senouci Abdelkader et Zerouk Ghaouti
11 avril 1957 Constantine Beddiar Fehrat
23 mai 1957 Alger Boutrik Miloud et Azzouz Saïd
25 mai 1957 Oran Mohamed Benbakhti
20 juin 1957 Alger Saïd Touati, Bellanimi Mohand, Lakhal Boualem, Hamida Radi
22 juin 1957 Alger Ferradj Makhlouf, Hahad Abderrazak ben Mohamed, Gacem Mohamed Seghir et Labdi Jafar ben Abdelkrim Makhlouf, frère d'Abdelkader Makhlouf, exécuté le 19 juin 1956.
25 juin 1957 Oran Saada Bendahmane et Kamel ben Aïssa
26 juin 1957 Constantine Yousfi Abdemadjad
02 juillet 1957 Oran Youssi Mohamed et Zenasni Ahmed Terroristes
03 juillet 1957 Constantine Fizi Mohamed Lakdar, Fizi Salah ben Amar, Fizi Mohammed ben Ali et Benchika Mostefa
25 juillet 1957 Alger Badèche ben Hamdi, Labdi Ali et Hasni Boualem
27 juillet 1957 Oran Yklef Belaïd et Hassan ben Ahmed Terroristes
10 août 1957 Alger Sidi Iklef et Laab Zayeb
14 août 1957 Constantine Deux indigènes
09 octobre 1957 Alger 3 membres du FLN
10 octobre 1957 Alger 3 membres du FLN
12 octobre 1957 Constantine 3 membres du FLN
12 novembre 1957 Alger 3 indigènes
13 novembre 1957 Alger 2 indigènes
14 novembre 1957 Constantine Un indigène
07 décembre 1957 Constantine Quatre indigènes
17 février 1958 Alger Trois membres du FLN
18 février 1958 Alger Trois membres du FLN
22 février 1958 Constantine Azzi Areski, Gueroui Brahim, Bellout Brahim, Lachouri Rachid
1958 Alger Ferrhat Amar
24 avril 1958 Alger Abderrhammane Taleb, Gharbi Saïd et Saad ben Belgacem
29 avril 1958 Constantine Khaldi Brahim, Abaci Ahmed et Harrouche Saïd
30 avril 1958 Constantine Hammadou Hocine, Bouchelaghem Mohamed et Bourras Tayeb
25 août 1958 Alger Aoussi ben Mohamed et Aoussi Mohammed ben Bachir
02 septembre 1959 Constantine Hameur-Laïm Mohammed
21 mai 1959 Oran Bouzid Kaddour
Since the end of France's occupation of Algeria in 1962, there has been little debate about the French colonization campaign in North Africa and its subsequent efforts at maintaining the colony. Very few people have dared to re-examine the atrocities committed by colonizing states in many parts of the world in the last two centuries. Among the worst atrocities were those committed by France in Algeria between 1830 and 1962.
France invaded Algiers in June 1830 under the excuse of fighting piracy and avenging an affront caused by Hussein Dey's reprimand of the French ambassador over the failure to pay a long-standing debt owed to the Algiers regency, which was recognized as a sovereign state by the United States and most of Europe. According to many historians, the main reason for the military assault on Algiers was the need of French ruler Charles X to build up his weak popularity and power at home. After Algiers fell to the invading forces, it took more than forty years of violent and highly destructive military campaigns to control the rest of the country.
The French occupied Algeria for 132 years and imposed a series of policies which aimed at controlling the territory and its people by all means possible, opening the country to European settlers, and extracting substantial economic and geostrategic benefits. These policies, which were systematically and violently implemented, had devastating human, social and economic consequences.
The "Pacification" of Algeria: Massacres and Dispossession
In the late 1830s French rule in Algeria was entrusted to the military, which was ordered to pacify the country by all means and to facilitate the immigration of European settlers (mainly from France, Italy, and Spain). Command was given to General Thomas Bugeaud, who was named Governor General of Algeria in 1840. His army of 108,000 troops tracked down Algerians, tortured, humiliated, and killed them, or expelled them from their lands and villages. He conducted a long military campaign against the Algerian resistance, which was led by Emir Abdel-Qader. Bugeaud finally defeated this early resistance, but not without allowing and encouraging his troops to commit horrible crimes against the Algerians.
The crimes associated with this "pacification" campaign reached their peak in 1845, when hundreds of people were burned alive or asphyxiated in caves where they sought refuge from the advancing French troops that were conducting large scale razzia (systematic raids on villages). The raiding French troops burned, destroyed or stole property, food, and animal stocks; they also raped women and killed villagers in great numbers. The violent acts committed at that time against the indigenous population, and which today would constitute internationally recognized crimes, were documented in several witness accounts and reports such as the one issued by a royal commission in 1883.
We tormented, at the slightest suspicion and without due process, people whose guilt still remains more than uncertain [. . .]. We massacred people who carried passes, cut the throats, on a simple suspicion, of entire populations which proved later to be innocent. . . . [Many innocent people were tried just because] they exposed themselves to our furor. Judges were available to condemn them and civilized people to have them executed. . . . In a word, our barbarism was worse than that of the barbarians we came to civilize, and we complain that we have not succeeded with them!
This policy of racism, wide-scale massacres, and scorched earth, enabled France to win the war of conquest by the end of 1847, and Algeria was annexed to France in 1848. In the years that followed, colonization increased the destruction of local social and economic structures and worsened the impoverishment of the indigenous population through property confiscation and forced mass migration from fertile lands. The worsening situation stimulated several attempts by the Algerians to end colonial rule. Some attempts were purely political, and aimed at achieving inclusion in the political process and changes in legislation. Others were mass actions, demanding independence.
In 1871 a mass rebellion led by El-Mokrani challenged the occupying forces in the Kabylie region, east of Algiers. This rural rebellion, the largest since the surrender of Emir Abdel-Qader, was crushed by the French and followed by the imposition of very heavy punishments on the entire indigenous population, including further land confiscations; new, onerous taxes, and a tighter control of the people. According to historian Charles Robert Ageron, in his book Modern Algeria: A History from 1830 to the Present (1991), this punishment "was intended to terrorize the natives into submission once and for alllso to procure lands and money for colonization" (p. 52).
In 1871 right after the ill-fated El-Mokrani rebellion, a group of notables published a text, Colonisation de l'Algérie par le système de colonisation du Maréchal Bugeaud, assessing the policy of Bugeaud. They declared that
the empire has done in Algeria what it would never dare do in France. It has committed against the Arabs a crime against humanity and against the army, that of offering the elite of its officers to the monstrous appetite of the leaders (p. 13).
Alexis de Tocqueville, a member of the French Parliament who had just written his famous book Democracy in America, supported not only colonization itself, but also the means used by Bugeaud's army to achieve it:
As for me, I often heard in France men, whom I respect but do not agree with, who found it bad that we burned crops, emptied stock silos, and took unarmed men, women, and children. For me, these are unfortunate necessities which any people that want to wage war against the Arabs is obliged to do (de Tocqueville, 1988, p. 77).
Although the 1871 rebellion did not succeed, it paved the way for the final assault on the colonial system, which occurred in 1954. Between these two dates, the Algerians made many peaceful demands for the end of colonial control, but to no avail.
The Massacres of May 1945
At the end of World War II in Europe, large-scale, peaceful demonstrations were organized, and on May 8 demonstrators throughout Algeria voiced their demands for independence. The most notable demonstrations took place in the northeastern cities of Setif, Guelma, Kherrata, Bejaia, Annaba, and Souk-Ahras. The demonstrators were met with hostile gun fire and physical attacks, both from settlers and from the French security forces. An Algerian carrying the then-prohibited Algerian flag was shot to death in Setif by a policeman, touching off riots. General Duval, commander of the military division of the province of Constantine, called in the air force and paratroopers, who responded to the demonstrators with such extreme violence that 45,000 Algerians were killed within a few days.
The Algerians began a well-coordinated push for independence, while France employed every means available to quell the uprising, including military repression, collective punishment, torture, and even concentration camps. The irony of the situation was not lost on some observers. Writing in Le Monde Diplomatique, Pascal Blanchard, Sandrine Lemaire, and Nicolas Bancel observe:
Of course, one cannot compare colonialism to Nazism, but the contradiction was reinforced between a France that celebrates the victory of democratic nations over a genocidal state and its maintaining, by military means, the submission of a population that was subjugated for over a century (pp. 101).
State-Sanctioned Torture
In 1957 the International Red Cross disclosed the widespread use of torture by the French army and police against thousands of Algerians. After that, information about the French treatment of Algerians became available to the wider public. The torture techniques used by the French included electricity applied to the most sensitive parts of the body, near drowning in water, sodomy with glass and wood objects, hanging by the feet and hands, and burning with cigarettes.
It was not until the early 2000s, forty years after Algeria achieved independence, that some of the aging French colonels and generals who served in Algeria finally admitted the horrors that they, their colleagues, or their subordinates had committed in Algeria. Among them were Generals Marcel Bigeard, Jacques Massu, and Paul Aussaresses. In his book, Services Spéciaux 1955957, Aussaresses admits to a specific act of torture: "It was useless that day. That guy died without saying anything . . . I have no regrets for his death. If I regretted something, it was the fact that he did not speak before dying." He also tells of how he ordered and watched many cold-blooded killings of prisoners, just because he did not have enough room to keep them. The International Human Rights Federation indicated that the general should be charged with crimes against humanity, but the French government chose not to prosecute him and others like him because of a 1968 law that absolves everyone for acts committed during the war. This protection disregards the dispositions of Article 303 of the French penal code, which sanctions any person who engages in torture.
The Algerian War of Independence (1954962), a guerrilla-style struggle between the French army and pro-independence Algerians, left in its wake over a million Algerian citizens (both military and civilians) dead and the widespread destruction of the land. Here, a resting Harki soldier gazes on a devastated Algerian village, 1960. [MARC GARANGER/CORBIS]
According to most accounts, the political leaders of France were well aware of the crimes committed by the military they sent to quell the rebellion that began in November 1954. General Aussaresses admitted that Justice Minister Franìois Mitterand (who became France's president in 1981) knew about and approved the methods used by the Special Services of the army. In other words, the military were given carte blanche to do whatever they saw fit in combating the Algerian nationalists. In 1955, when evidence of torture in Algeria started becoming bothersome for France (which had just abandoned Vietnam), the government of Prime Minister Pierre Mendès France ordered an immediate study of the issue. However, that study was intended to dismiss the accusations rather than to confirm them. The ensuing Roger Willaume Report, which referred mostly to "violence" ( sévices ) rather than torture, did in fact find that the police used "violent methods that were 'old-established practice'" and that "in normal times they are only employed on persons against whom there is a considerable weight of evidence or guilt and for whom there are therefore no great feelings of pity" (Maran, 1989, p. 48). Even though this report was not dismissed by the government, its findings had no effect on the use of torture by the French police and army in Algeria. As Rita Maran points out: "In the colonial milieu, the application of the ideology of the civilizing mission had failed a crucial test, through the barbarous behavior of the police trained by France. The 'rights of man' were not merely neutralized in the colonial situation, they were actively violated" (Maran, 1989, p. 51).
Violence against Algerians was not limited to Algeria proper. Immigrant workers in France were also punished for their sympathy for their embattled compatriots in the homeland. Beginning in August 1958, and using what he had learned during his service in Algeria, Parisian chief of police Maurice Papon rounded up more than 5,000 Algerian immigrants because of suspicion of support for the nationalists. In 1959 he created an internment (concentration) camp at Vincennes, just outside of Paris, where hundreds of Algerians were jailed without trial and were subjected to terrible treatment. On October 17, 1961, Algerian nationalist militants held a peaceful march in Paris to demand the independence of Algeria. Unfortunately, that peaceful show of solidarity quickly turned into a bloodbath. The police charged the protesters with gunfire and night sticks, killing more than 200 immigrants, many of whom were thrown into the Seine river. Papon's culpability for crimes was not limited to his treatment of Algerians. He was tried in the year 2000 for having helped deport Jews to Nazi Germany during World War II.
Economic and Social Destruction
The horrific violence used by France against Algerians in the context of colonization did not limit itself to physical brutality and cruelty. It also came in the form of humiliation, economic dispossession, and social dislocation. After France decided to colonize Algeria and transform it into a French land, its military repression was complemented by a series of actions and policies that disrupted the lives and livelihoods of several generations of the indigenous population.
During the repressive "pacification" of Algeria's population, the colonization of the land also went forward, involving the destruction of the existing social structures and economic system. This was done by force and by passing laws, such as the sénatus-consulte and the Warnier law of 1873, which dispossessed rural families and communities of ancestral land that was not alienable under the existing Islamic and customary laws. General Bugeaud summed up France's interest in the land: "What is to take in [Algeria] is only one interest, the agricultural interest. . . . Oh, yes, I could not find another way to subdue the country other than take that interest" (Stora, 1991, p. 25). The expropriation of land was massive, and most Algerians found themselves deprived of their main mean of subsistence. Those who were lucky found insecure employment in the new large European-owned properties. Collective punishment was also used a regular means to take more land away from the local population. This happened after the El-Mokrani upheaval, in which 500,000 acres of land were confiscated. This punishment was accompanied by a total denial of due process and the 1881 imposition of harsh common law sanctions formulated in the Code de l'Indigénat (laws for the natives).
When France lost Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871, thousands of residents of that region were resettled in Algeria and awarded land confiscated from the Algerians. By the end of the century, over half of Algeria's arable land was controlled by the Europeans. The few Algerians who had retained their land were so heavily taxed and victimized by so many natural and bureaucratic calamities that they could barely subsist. This condition led Alexis de Tocquevilleho wrote a blueprint for colonizationo observe in 1847 "we have rendered the Muslim society a lot more miserable, more disorganized, more ignorant, and more barbarian than what it was before it knew us" (p. 170).
Between 1830 and 1860 there were 3 million Algerians, 3.5 million by 1891 and 5 million in 1921. In 1886 there were 219,000 French settlers and 211,000 other Europeans (Spaniards, Italians, and Maltese). The total European population reached 984,000 in 1954, while the Algerians numbered 6 million. Yet the European minority controlled not only most of the country's wealth, but also the fate of those they had subjugated in their own land.
Using the "divide and rule" principle, the French created through the 1870 Crémieux Decrees, which extended French citizenship to Algerian Jews and European settlers while excluding Muslim Algerians from citizenship. The French also created a distinction between Arab and Berber Algerians, and promoted Berber over the Arabic language because the latter was a unifying medium for Algerian nationalism. The social schisms thus created among Algeria's peoples continued to have a negative legacy into the twenty-first century, more than 40 years after Algeria's independence.
Violence at Independence and Beyond
The war of independence waged by the Algerians for more than 7 years (1954962) left 1.5 million Algerians dead and substantially weakened the already meagre economic and social infrastructure. Eighteen months after coming to power in 1958, retired General Charles de Gaulle understood that the war in Algeria no longer served France's interests. In 1960, negotiations with the Algerian nationalists (National Liberation Front) began for a "clean" and orderly exit of France from Algeria. A referendum in Algeria and France gave an overwhelming support to de Gaulle's policy with regard to Algeria. The Evian Accords between France and the Algerian nationalists sealed the final terms for Algeria's independence in July 1962. However, the hardliners among the French settlers in Algeria did everything possible to resist such an outcome. They disobeyed orders from Paris, and even threatened to invade the motherland and take control for the sake of maintaining Algeria as a French possession. In a last desperate attempt, they created the Organization of the Secret Army (OAS) which would use terror to try to stall the independence momentum. Led by General Raoul Salan, this organization engaged in terrorist actions not only against Algerians, but also against French individuals and public offices deemed sympathetic to Algeria's independence. A few months before Algeria regained its sovereignty, French radical settlers and disenchanted members of the military engaged in a systematic campaign of murder and destruction. Hundreds of people were killed in the midst of burning towns and cities.
In June 1962 French settlers began their e
us, returning to France by the thousands each day, leaving behind them death and destruction. France was exiting Algeria the same way it had entered, with a widespread terror and scorched earth policy. On July 1, 1962, a referendum in Algeria showed that 91.23 percent of voters supported independence.
The Harkis
In 1954, France managed to entice thousands of Algerians to collaborate with its forces with the promise of assimilation and better treatment by the colonial administration. They became known as the harkis and served mostly as self-defense groups aiding the colonial forces against the nationalists. According to a report sent the United Nations in 1961, there were 263,000 pro-France Algerians, of whom 58,000 were harkis.
When the French began to withdraw from Algeria, they knew that the harkis were in imminent danger of being slaughtered by fellow Algerians for treason. Nonetheless, French officials did not seem too concerned with the fate of their erstwhile allies. Thousands of harkis were left behind to die within the first weeks of independence. According to a 2003 book, Un Mensonge Français (A French Lie) by Georges-Marc Benamou, the government of Charles de Gaulle explicitly refused to repatriates the bulk of the harki population. Legal representative of thousands of harkis that managed to reach France in 1962 began a lawsuit in November 2003 against the surviving members of De Gaulle's government, accusing them of crime against humanity and ethnic cleansing.
The colonial venture in Algeria thus closed with yet another massacre that France could have avoided. Many of those responsible for the crimes committed in Algeria escaped persecution because of French amnesty laws protecting them and because of the resistance of French officials to open the files of colonization for an objective analysis and evaluation of that painful past.
French National Front Leader Urges Recognition of French Crimes in Algeria
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