FOR A WORK OF MEMORY BUT NOT

A SINGLE SENSE ON THE WAR IN ALGERIA

Emmanuel Macron added an additional stone to his memorial recognition project started since the start of his mandate to try to close the scars of the Algerian war.

Saturday, on the occasion of an official ceremony for the 60th anniversary of the massacre of Algerians on October 17, 1961 in Paris, Emmanuel Macron denounced "inexcusable crimes for the Republic". “France looks at its entire history with lucidity and recognizes the clearly established responsibilities. It owes it first and foremost to itself, to all those whom the Algerian war and its procession of crimes committed on all sides have bruised in their flesh and in their soul ”, explains a press release. of the Élysée. While in 2012, François Hollande admitted "a bloody repression", the Head of State therefore went even further by participating in the national tribute paid on the banks of the Seine, at the level of the Bezons bridge,borrowed 60 years ago by Algerian demonstrators who arrived from the neighboring slum of Nanterre at the appeal of the branch of the FLN installed in France.

The current tenant of the Elysée has also planned “three commemorative and emblematic days”. And this, after the release, last January, of the report by historian Benjamin Stora on colonization and the war in Algeria. Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to the Harkis on September 25. The commemoration of this Saturday is therefore the second for the Head of State, who will participate in a third in March, for the sixty years of the Evian agreements.

But this umpteenth repentance calls for some remarks that those responsible for the right have not failed to make.

Marine Le Pen has indeed castigated "repentance repentance" while the president of Debout France and presidential candidate of 2022, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan remarked that "Algeria spits on France and Emmanuel Macron does penance . The head of state must inspire pride and not the shame of being French. », He reacted.

Shouldn't memory work be done in both directions? France has the right to expect Algeria to also do its memorial aggiornamento instead of living on "its memorial rent", a remark made by the French president during an exchange with descendants of the protagonists of the Algerian war. - Words that had provoked the anger of Algiers who had, in response, recalled the same day its ambassador based in Paris and closed its airspace to French military planes the next day ...-

"Criminalizing our history is a mistake"

Also the deputy LR Michèle Tabarot considers that "our country does not have to submit to the memorial injunctions of the Algerian regime which multiplies the anti-France provocations". “Criminalizing our history is a mistake. One-sided repentance too, ”she scolds.

Some also insisted on the fact that certain other events were neither commemorated nor even mentioned by the President of the Republic. Thus the deputy of the Alpes Maritimes Éric Ciotti to remind: "We are still awaiting the commemoration by the president of the massacre of Oran of July 5, 1962 where the FLN massacred several hundred Pied-Noirs and Harkis loyal to France", a- he added. Same reproach of Senator LR of Bouches-du-Rhône Valérie Boyer who invites Emmanuel Macron to "go further on the missing, the recognition of the massacres of the rue d'Isly and d'Oran, the maintenance of French cemeteries in Algeria ... ”. And let's not forget to contextualize the events ...

“The duty to remember must prevail, but contempt for our History and this permanent one-sided repentance are unworthy. (...) To look at objective facts is to look at the whole of history. Including, therefore, the crimes committed by the FLN against the French in Algeria, ”she concludes, in a letter addressed to Emmanuel Macron and posted on Twitter.

One can rightly wonder if this “victim propaganda” denounced by the right is not also part of a strategy to differentiate itself from Marine Le Pen, political calculation in view of the presidential election ...