Emmanuel Macron receives harkis at the Elysee today to “appease” memories – franceinfo

France is getting closer to recognizing its responsibility for the suffering of the harkis. It is in any case for “take a new step” thanmmanuel Macron chairs, Monday, September 20 in the morning, a reception dedicated to these former combatants alongside the French army during the Algerian war.

About 300 people were invited to the Elysée. These are harkis, who are now very old, sixty years after the end of the conflict, but also their descendants, heads of associations and personalities.

This reception is held five days before the national day of homage to the harkis, which has been celebrated every September 25 since 2003, especially in the south of France where they are very present.

The highlight of Monday will be Emmanuel Macron’s speech at 10:30 am, in which he will “open the repair site”, going further than his predecessor François Hollande, who recognized in 2016 “the responsibilities of the French governments in the abandonment of the harkis”. “The president considers that the work accomplished for sixty years is important but that it is necessary to take a new step in the recognition of the failure which was made to the harkis but also to the failure of the French Republic to its own values, explains the Elysee. The history of the harkis is a history of the French and it is the history of the French; it is in this state of mind that we must approach this new chapter. “

The harkis are these former combatants (up to 200,000 men) recruited as auxiliaries to the French army during the conflict which between 1954 and 1962 opposed the Algerian separatists to France. At the end of this war, some of these auxiliaries, abandoned by Paris, were victims of reprisals in Algeria.

Several tens of thousands of others, often accompanied by women and children, were transferred to France, where they were placed in “transit and reclassification camps” with undignified and lasting traumatic living conditions.