PARIS – France will set up a “memories and truth” commission to review the country’s colonial history in Algeria, following an important recommendation in a new, much-anticipated report commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron and announced on Wednesday was made.
The report also presented a series of other proposals to address long-standing grievances. But that excludes the issuance of an official apology for the past and the proposals avoiding the issue of systemic torture by French forces, which Mr. Macron has already acknowledged.
The report said that the aim was to bring about a “reconciliation of memories between France and Algeria”, two countries that were not only divided by the Mediterranean, but also by deep hostility due to years of colonization and ‘ a war of independence that left hundreds of thousands dead.
In a statement issued late Wednesday, Mr. Macron’s office said it would set up a commission on memories and truth as recommended. In addition, it is said that three ceremonies organized by the French government in 2021 and 2022 will pay tribute to Algerians who fought on both sides of the war and to the agreement that led to Algeria’s independence in 1962.
The report was written by French historian Benjamin Stora, who will now head the commission. He said the report focused on a series of concrete actions to lift the lid on a number of issues left behind by the French colonial past and the Algerian war.
“If you lift all these lids one after the other, you get a real overview of the history of colonization,” he said.
Mr. In a letter to Mr. Stora asked for a “work of truth, responsibility and clarity” about “the wounds of our past”.
In the letter, the president said that the “subject of colonization and the Algerian war had for too long hindered the construction of a common destination in the Mediterranean for our two countries.”
When commissioned by the report, Macron ventured into the sensitive area to which the last six French presidents did not want to go.
The French colonial past in Algeria is a trauma that continues to shape modern France, with nostalgia on the right and resentment among the large Muslim population of the European country. The millions of inhabitants of France who have ties to Algeria to varying degrees have vivid memories of colonial history and the war, making an official explanation politically risky.
Reconciling with the shadows of his past was a long and difficult task for France, as it was for many nations. It took half a century before France publicly acknowledged its responsibility to deport tens of thousands of Jews to the Nazi death camps during the German occupation in World War II.
The truth of the Algerian war is also buried for decades. Sixty years after the war of 1954-62 ended and the curtain fell on 132 years of French colonization in Algeria, the issue of France’s colonial past has sparked debates over the integration of French Muslims, many of whom are of Algerian descent. is.
Perhaps no French president went further than Mr. Macron in France’s colonial past in Algeria, which he called a ‘crime against humanity’ in 2017. Mr. In September 2018, Macron officially acknowledged for the first time the widespread use of torture by French forces, but neither he nor previous presidents apologized for France’s colonial past in the African country.
“We are a country with a colonial past and traumas that still have not resolved it, with facts that underlie our collective psyche,” he said. Macron said in a speech in October. “The Algerian war is part of this.”
Mr. Stora, the historian, proposed a series of about 30 measures, including the conversion of internment camps for Algerians in France into memorial sites and the revamping of French curricula to improve the teaching of the history of France in Algeria. A dozen recommendations highlight the need to increase cooperation between both countries on historical studies.
The report also advises against officially apologizing for the past, arguing that concrete action is more effective in promoting reconciliation. Macron’s office said on Wednesday that there would be “no remorse or apology” for the French occupation of Algeria.
Almost none of the proposals relate to the systemic torture perpetrated by Mr. Macron was not recognized.
Raphaëlle Branche, a historian specializing in the Algerian war, pointed to the acknowledgment, adding that she “has never heard an Algerian official hear the case” for greater recognition of the issue.
France officially declared the fighting that led to Algeria’s independence until 1999 a real war, and government initiatives to construct a memory of the traumatic period have since barely gone beyond the official conversation.
“The problem is that we have wasted a lot of time with French-Algerian history just by realizing what happened,” he said. Stora said.
Sometimes Mr. Macron’s opposition to the case was opposed in France, including by his own prime minister, Jean Castex, who critics of those who ‘regret colonization’. Mr. Castex argued that such sentiments could be used as a justification for radical Islamism.
The call from mr. Macron’s opening of all archives dealing with people who disappeared during the war is also contradicted by a recent tightening of the French administration’s rules on documents considered confidential, including many relating to Algeria.
Mr. In his report, Stora called for the restrictions to be revoked, saying that access to archives is essential to shed light on the past.
The Algerian war feeds bitter feelings among the at least five million inhabitants of France with ties to Algeria, including French inhabitants of colonial Algeria who were forced into exile, war veterans and the families of immigrants.
The ideological conflicts that colored the war – such as France’s universalist model in Algeria that mixed principles such as secularism with nationalism – were introduced on French soil and still drive identity politics today. The far-right National Rally party has for the first time taken root in the popular opposition in France to leave Algeria.
Feelings were especially sharp among many young French people of Algerian descent who denounced what they saw as a continuation of racial hierarchies in France dating back to the colonial era and a constant questioning of their identity.
“We have inherited a history that has not been resolved, that has happened before us and that we are experiencing the consequences of,” said Faïza Guène, a French writer of Algerian origin, who recently published ‘Discretion’, a novel about the silent transmission of colonial trauma within Algerian immigrant families.
Me. Guene said the breach of this silence worried many people. “It’s the fear of waking up a volcano,” she said.