“I opened 15 years ago (from the legal deadline) the archive of the judicial investigations of the gendarmerie and police forces on the Algerian war,” French Culture Minister Roslyn Bachelot told BFMTV on Friday.
These statements came two days after the visit of the French Foreign Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, to Algiers.
“We have things that must be reconstructed with Algeria, and they can only be reconstructed according to the truth,” the minister said.
On September 13, 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron admitted that the disappearance of mathematician and communist activist Maurice Auden in 1957 in Algiers was the work of the French army, and promised his family that they would have access to the archive.
On March 9, 2021, the French President announced, as part of his “small steps” policy, simplifying access to procedures for declassifying confidential documents more than 50 years old, making it possible to shorten the waiting periods associated with this procedure.
“restorative memory”
Ana Gudicelli, an expert in international affairs, said that the Algerian war is one of the barriers that stand as an obstacle to the development of relations between Algeria and Paris, and this is what prompted President Emmanuel Macron to assign the historian, Benjamin Stora, to research the historical aspects of this relationship, and to present his recommendations. about what to do.
Gudicelli added, in an interview with “Sky News Arabia”, that France took this step so that there would be an establishment of memory in a reconciliatory manner between the two countries “on the basis of historical actions, not just words.”
When the researcher was asked about the reason for France to reveal these historical matters instead of resolving the file, she made it clear that today there is a step regarding the war archive, because if the most sensitive part of the past is opened, “it may be premature.”
political gain
For his part, Professor of Political Science, Taoufik Boukadeh, believes that Paris is trying to make political gains by dealing with the issues of the Algerian archives in France.
He indicated, in an interview with “Sky News Arabia”, that President Emmanuel Macron wants to win additional cards in preparation for the upcoming presidential elections, “after he lost his bet on the extreme right and decided to return to the base of the left and center.”
He adds that Macron is also striving to win over the voices of French people of Algerian origin, through these steps that are described as conciliatory towards Algeria.
The Algerian researcher accused France of dealing with the archive by “manipulating terms” and “disinformation”, saying that Macron had promised earlier to declassify part of the French archive, “while lifting confidentiality does not mean enabling researchers to access it, and there are papers being pulled it off.”
The researcher suggested that France’s reluctance to deal with this file in detail instead of gradualism was primarily due to fear of tarnishing the image of the European state, when “exposing” the violations it committed during the colonization of Algeria.
.