French FM Catherine Colonna Admits Paris’s Slowness in Dealing With the Memory File
French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna acknowledged Paris’s slowness in dealing with the memory file with Algeria and other African countries such as Rwanda and Benin.
Colonna said in an interview with the French newspaper “Le Monde”, on Sunday, that work has become necessary on how her country deals with countries with which it has a shared past, which has not been done quickly enough, especially about memory and history or the return of works of art, whether in the case of Rwanda, Algeria, Cameroon and Benin.
The French Minister considered that what is happening to Paris in some African countries, such as Niger and Mali, are indicators of the need to accelerate the reconsideration of its relations with the entire African continent. She stressed that the “France – Africa” died a long time ago, adding that Paris was able in six years to develop partnerships, it has increased its solidarity investment by 50% and is ready to develop it with countries with which it has a common past, such as Algeria, Rwanda and Benin.
Catherine Colonna expressed her concern about these crises because she believes that they sometimes give the impression that they go back fifty years, but Paris should not – according to her – look at its relations with the African continent from this perspective alone.
According to Colonna, France must be careful of the effect of the magnifying glass. It is not three thousand or five thousand people demonstrating in a stadium in Niamey, some of whom are paid, that sums up France’s relations with 1.5 billion Africans, asserting that Africa is not only the Sahel region but “France’s relations developing with countries where we were less present, such as Kenya, South Africa and Ethiopia”.
The confession of the French head of diplomacy came at a time when the French and Algerian sides were preparing to announce the date of holding the second meeting of the committee of historians, known as the Quintet, scheduled in Algeria after it met last April in Paris.
The Algerian-French Memory Commission is working on the memory file between the two countries, which requires recognition by the French side of this past, as resolving the memory file, according to the Algerian adherence, must go through the recognition of all files related to the colonial era from 1830 to 1962 as a basic point, because memory is not only related to the liberation revolution, which is something that the French side is trying to obscure and ignore by limiting its colonial history to the period between 1954 and 1962 only, thus ignoring its responsibilities for the previous tragedies of Algerians and massacres of martyrs during more than 132 years.
