The Emir Abdelkader definitely does not leave anyone indifferent. A sculpture in his likeness, to be inaugurated this Saturday, February 5 in France, was vandalized overnight.
The steelwork was made at the foot of the Château d’Amboise where the leader of the Algerian resistance to French occupation was detained for five years after his surrender in 1847.
The creation of a stele in tribute to Emir Abdelkader is among the proposals of the report by historian Benjamin Stora submitted to French President Emmanuel Macron in early 2021 and entitled “Memories of colonization and the Algerian war”.
The proposal was quickly implemented with this steel sculpture designed by the artist Michel Audiard. It is a gigantic sheet of rusty steel in the middle of which is carved the silhouette of the famous character.
The city of Amboise, in the department of Indre-et-Loire, was logically chosen to host the work. It was in the castle of this city that the Emir was detained between 1848 and 1852, before his exile in the Middle East. In Syria, where he settled and where he died in 1883, he distinguished himself in particular by his actions in favor of the defense of Eastern Christians, which still earns him the esteem of the whole world today. .
The work of “reconciliation of memories” is not to everyone’s taste in France, especially among circles nostalgic for “French Algeria”.
Just hours before the inauguration of the Emir Abdelkader sculpture, it was vandalized. The mayor of the city, Thierry Boutard, who was to proceed with the inauguration, denounced a “despicable rampage” in a “period when some take pleasure in the hatred of others”. “It was cut with a grinder and twisted,” Mr. Boutard told the Liberation newspaper. An investigation was opened for “serious degradation”.
Some far-right voices have shown their opposition to the production of the work in recent days, describing the Emir as “hero of the fight against France” (Fdesouche site) or even as a “historic opponent of France” (Gilbert Collard, support from Eric Zemmour).
In Algeria, Emir Abdelkader is considered the founder of the modern Algerian state. In June 2021, former deputy Nordine Aït Hamouda, son of Colonel Amirouche, was arrested and imprisoned for two months for calling him a “traitor”.
