First green light from the National Assembly for the “reparation” bill for the harkis

Published on : 11/18/2021 – 19:33

“Overcome denials and taboos”: the National Assembly on Thursday, November 18 gave the first green light to the bill to ask for “forgiveness” and try to “repair” the prejudices suffered by the harkis and their families, with compensation that the The opposition hoped for more.

The text, voted on at first reading by 46 votes against 1 and 6 abstentions, is now awaited in the Senate. Almost sixty years after the Algerian War, it is intended to be the legislative translation of a speech by Emmanuel Macron, who, on September 20, asked “forgiveness” from those Algerians who fought alongside the French army, but which were “abandoned” by France.

Camps and “forestry hamlets”

The bill combines a memorial dimension and compensation. He recognizes “the unworthy conditions of the reception” reserved for the 90,000 harkis and their families who fled Algeria after independence.

Almost half of them were relegated to camps and “logging hamlets”.

Consequently, the bill provides for “compensation” for the damage, with the key to a lump sum taking into account the length of stay in these structures.

It is on this aspect that the debates were concentrated. The opposition demanded compensation for the 90,000 harkis “including those who did not go through transit camps” but were received in “unworthy conditions”.

Families of harkis were present in the stands and associations demanded before the Assembly extended reparation.

Geneviève Darrieussecq, Minister Delegate for Memory and Veterans Affairs, insisted on the “specific prejudice” of the 50,000 harkis relegated to “six camps”, “sixty-nine forestry hamlets” and “a few other centers” of “deprivation of freedom “, a” unique thing, particularly contrary to our republican principles “.

There are “gray areas, even 60 years later,” she admits, however. If additional places are identified, “of course we will integrate them”.

Fifty million euros have already been entered in the 2022 draft budget to supplement the compensation fund. The global sum of 302 million euros, for several years, is mentioned.

But reparation “cannot do everything, it does not erase painful memories”, underlined Geneviève Darrieussecq, who calls for being at “the meeting point of truth and honor” to turn one of the “most important pages. gloomy history of France “.

Several deputies, some of whom are descendants of returnees from Algeria, have let their emotions shine through, such as LREM rapporteur Patricia Mirallès. A palpable seriousness also in David Habib (PS, Pyrénées-Atlantiques) or Alexis Corbière (LFI, Seine-Saint-Denis) whose constituencies have many descendants of harkis.

Always a hot topic

“The war is over and woe to those who constantly reactivate the terms of the conflict,” said Alexis Corbière, implicitly targeting the far-right polemicist and putative presidential candidate Eric Zemmour.

“These men who did not have a French first name and were of Muslim religion defended France better than certain traitors to the Nation”, also underlined Julien Aubert (LR) in a cryptic allusion to statements by Eric Zemmour.

The deputy for Vaucluse in passing denounced the recognition in 2018 by Emmanuel Macron of the State’s responsibility for the disappearance and death under torture of the mathematician Maurice Audin, in 1957. An Algerian independence activist Julien Aubert has presented, under protests from the left, as a “traitor” to the homeland.

Geneviève Darrieussecq immediately called not to put “a piece back in the machine for comparing memories”.

With this bill, President Macron goes further than his predecessors, by acknowledging a “debt” to the harkis and their families. Asking “forgiveness” is far from being trivial when it comes to the Algerian conflict, a subject still so hot on both sides of the Mediterranean, as the recent tensions between Paris and Algiers have reminded us of.

Up to 200,000 harkis had been recruited as auxiliaries to the French army during the conflict between 1954 and 1962.

A day of homage to the nation is dedicated to them every September 25, since a 2003 decree. Symbolically, the deputies voted on Thursday for this date of September 25 to be explicitly “written into the law”.

With AFP