French lobbies pressure Hollande to ask for compensations from Algerian authorities

Influential lobbies are using Francois Hollande’s historical decision to acknowledge the crimes perpetrated against hundreds of Algerians during the peaceful march of October 17, 1961, as a means to pressure French politicians to clinch spoils of the memory “war” that broke out between Algiers and Paris since the independence of the country.

• The French war veterans minister Kadr Aaref counts among the people that surfed on the wave of demands and called on the Algerian authorities to make a “step” forward toward the “ Algerian – French” including the so called “ harkis” , collaborators and those born in Algeria, commonly known as “ Pieds Noirs”, that still dream of the” lost paradise”.
• The Algerian born minister, a collaborator’ son, said” Turning the page should be from the Algerian side also, which means that the Algerian people should make initiatives toward the French of Algerian origins( Pied Noirs) and those living in France ( collaborators)”.
• In a interview to the French newspaper “ Le Journal Du Dimanche”, the minister has vehemently rejected the Algerians’ demand for repentance, a grievance he sensed during the visit paid by François Hollande to Algeria in 2006 and 2010 in his quality as the Socialist Party Secretary General; but he didn’t exclude the possibility of dealing with the issue provided that the Algerian side takes part in the repentance…”
• The minister seized this opportunity to call on the Algerian authorities to “ allow the collaborators to visit their mother country and be buried there if they express the will, noting that the issue was largely discussed with their Algerian friends that didn’t feel upset by the matter”.
• The French FM Laurent Fabius has tried to brush away the issue from the agenda of the president during his upcoming visit to Algeria slated for next December, saying that the issue of repentance is not on the agenda of the president’s visit, pretending that the Algerian people refuse to sleep with the past”.
• The former diplomat and minister Abdelaziz Rehabi has declared that the French extreme right wing are behind the idea of “ Repentance” which has a religious connotation in the Christian religion, adding that Algeria has never asked France to repent, but acknowledge its colonial crimes.
• Historians have evaluated the financial damage in Algeria across 132 years of colonisation to some $ 75 billion not including the French debts toward Algeria.