Live: Macron expresses France’s “gratitude” for Algerian returnees

Published on : 01/26/2022 – 15:58

The Élysée evokes “a word of recognition”. President Emmanuel Macron is due to deliver a speech on Wednesday, January 26, for returnees from Algeria which will focus in particular on the shooting in the rue d’Isly in Algiers, in which dozens of supporters of French Algeria were killed by the army in March 1962.

A week after the signing of the Evian Accords and the ceasefire, on March 19, 1962, in Algeria, civilian demonstrators in favor of French Algeria who were trying to force the passage towards the district of Bab El-Oued, in the center of Algiers, were machine-gunned at a roadblock held by the French army.

The shooting, which lasted more than a quarter of an hour, caused, according to various sources, at least fifty deaths, all civilians, among the demonstrators. The shooting in the rue d’Isly marked the beginning of the mass exodus of Pieds-noirs from Algeria.

A peaceful memory between Paris and Algiers

This “recognition” is part of a series of memorial acts, since the beginning of the five-year term and at the approach of the 60^and anniversary of the end of the Algerian war with the Évian agreements, then the independence of this country on July 5, 1962.

On September 14, 2018, Emmanuel Macron acknowledged, “in the name of the French Republic”, that the young communist mathematician Maurice Audin had been “tortured to death, or tortured and then executed by the French army” in 1957.

Emmanuel Macron also denounced “inexcusable crimes for the Republic” during the 60th anniversary of the French police massacre of Algerian demonstratorson October 17, 1961 in Paris.

“The objective remains the same, to ultimately build a peaceful, shared memory, common to all that have been until then the memories linked to the Algerian war and to colonization”, by recognizing the “singularity of each “, underlined the Elysée.

With AFP