French President Emmanuel Macron was optimistic on Saturday about the “reconciliation of memories” on the Algerian war, saying “assume” his sometimes controversial memorial gestures, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Evian Accords and the ceasefire in Algeria.
The Head of State, the candidate for a new mandate, affirmed that he intended to continue to “reach out” to the Algerian authorities, even if the initiatives taken since the beginning of the five-year term have not made it possible to improve the relations between Algiers and Paris.
“I assume this outstretched hand” to Algeria, he declared in front of 200 guests gathered for a sober ceremony at the presidential palace of the Élysée, which was not attended by any Algerian official even if the ambassador in Paris had been invited.
“Many will say to me: you are doing all this, but you are not serious because Algeria is not moving (…) All my predecessors were confronted with the same thing”, he said. But “I think the day will come when Algeria will take this path.”
It is in relative discretion that this anniversary is marked, in the middle of the electoral campaign, three weeks before the first round of the presidential election.
Sixty years later, the date of March 19, 1962, the day of the entry into force of the ceasefire signed the day before between the French army and the Algerian separatists, continues to be controversial in France.
It was consecrated by law in 2012 as the “National Day of Remembrance and Meditation in memory of the civilian and military victims of the Algerian war and the fighting in Tunisia and Morocco”.
But the French repatriated from Algeria believe that the Evian Accords do not mark the end of the Algerian war which began in 1954, because of the violence which continued until the independence of Algeria on July 5 1962, and ended with the exodus of hundreds of thousands of them to France.
In his speech, which did not include any new announcement, Emmanuel Macron recalled all the actions taken since the start of his five-year term.
Since 2018, he has thus recognized the responsibility of the French army in the death of the communist mathematician Maurice Audin and that of the nationalist lawyer Ali Boumendjel during the battle of Algiers in 1957.
In addition, a stele in memory of Abd el-Kader, Algerian national hero of the refusal of the French colonial presence, was erected in France in Amboise (center) and the skulls of Algerian resistance fighters of the 19th century returned to Algeria.
Macron’s actions criticized on the right
But Algiers, which is demanding an official apology from France for colonization, did not follow up on this work of memory, and even reacted strongly when Emmanuel Macron reproached the Algerian “politico-military” system in October for maintaining a “memory rent” around the war of independence.
On Friday, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune declared that the “hideous crimes of colonization will not be forgotten and cannot be time-barred”, in a message on the occasion of this anniversary, celebrated in Algeria as a “Victory Day “.
The French president had invited on Saturday a hundred high school and college students around witnesses of the Algerian war: conscripts, Algerian independence fighters, harkis (Algerian auxiliaries to the French army threatened after the war) and French repatriates.
The far-right presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen, reaffirmed that “colonization had contributed to the development of Algeria”, as “many Algerians” admit, according to her. “Under the mandate of Emmanuel Macron, history is not balanced. As long as the only policy remains to spend one’s life apologizing without asking anything in return from an Algerian government that continues to insult France (…) we will not achieve this balance, “said she judged.
The right-wing candidate of the Les Républicains party, Valérie Pécresse, for her part, pledged on Friday to find “another date” of commemoration than March 19, because “80% of civilian victims fell after the Evian agreements”.
“The President of the Republic, with his memorial gestures, only fuels our suffering”, because “March 19 is a wound for the French in Algeria”, reacted to AFP Nicole Ferrandis, president of the ‘Association of victims of March 26, in reference to the shooting in Rue d’Isly in Algiers on March 26, 1962.
This date of March 19 “was neither the beginning of peace nor the end of the war”, but it “was a milestone” which “cannot be denied”, recognized Emmanuel Macron.
