PARIS (Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron has called the 60-year massacre of Algerian protesters by police in Paris an “unpardonable crime”, the strongest acknowledgment by a French head of state of the barbarism in which many bodies were killed. thrown into the Seine river.
On October 17, 1961, under the command of Paris police chief Maurice Papon, police attacked a demonstration of 25,000 Algerians organized by the National Liberation Front (FLN) who were protesting against a curfew imposed on them.
The demonstration was attacked “brutally and violently,” Macron’s office said in a statement. The text also states that around 12,000 Algerians were arrested, many were wounded and dozens were killed.
Macron took part in a ceremony on the Bezons bridge, west of Paris, from where the Algerians started the demonstration and from where many bodies were recovered from the Seine.
“He admitted the facts: the crimes committed that night under the authority of Maurice Papon are inexcusable for the Republic,” said a statement from the Élysée Palace.
The massacre, which took place during the war against French control in Algeria, was long denied or covered up by French authorities. The first tributes to victims were organized in 2001 by the mayor of Paris.
The precise number of those murdered by the Paris police has never been established. Some historians believe there were more than 200 dead.
This year’s honors come amid tensions between France and Algeria. Earlier this month, the country in North Africa convened its ambassador in Paris after comments attributed to Macron, who was quoted by the daily Le Monde as saying that Algeria’s rulers had rewritten the history of colonization based on “hatred against France”.
(By Sybille de La Hamaide)
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