French MP Calos Martens Bilongo Visits Algeria

The MP of the French National Assembly (the lower chamber of Parliament), Carlos Martens Bilongo, from the France Insoumise (unbowed) party, led by the revolutionary Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has been in Algeria since Thursday, April 11.

Bilongo wrote on his “X” account; “I will travel to #Algeria tomorrow as part of my proposed law aimed at the restitution by France of Algerian skulls”, which are placed in French museums, and “I will also mention the adoption by the National Assembly of a resolution calling for a day of commemoration for the massacre of October 17, 1961”,
a draft that was recently reserved during the ratification on the list of condemnation of crimes committed against Algerians in the protests of October 17, 1961.

Carlos Martens Bilongo, who is visiting Algeria, talked about the project he submitted that the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs acknowledged, on August 28, 2018, “the necessity of restituting the Algerian skulls, but indicated that there are two obstacles to that.” These two obstacles are represented in the fact that these human skulls have become part of French public property. The second matter is that the restitution of the skulls is conditional on identifying all the skulls concerned, especially through establishing a joint scientific committee between France and Algeria.

The legal draft also aims to allow the immediate recovery of skulls currently placed in French museums in a way that lacks human values, which prompted the deputy of the Embowed France Party to say that the recovery of the skulls of Algerian resistance cannot be subject to the establishment of a committee dedicated to this process and then verification of their authenticity.

The draft presented by the leftist MP points out that subjecting the restitution of the skulls to approval by a new specialized committee immediately after the abolition of the current committee is merely “pure bad faith”, before asking: “How can we justify, in this case, the intervention of the committee itself? Especially to identify all skulls?”, pointing out that what colonial France did, especially under the regime of the Third Republic, is considered a disgrace to the state because of these practices contradict the lofty human values.

For the revolutionary MP, the continued display of these skulls in French public museums is, in fact, “nothing but a manifestation of a practice that involves the desecration of corpses and pure and simple barbarism protected by pseudo-scientific arguments from another time, whose sole goal is to ensure the destruction and humiliation of the opponent who defended land and honour with dignity recognized by international laws and values.

In his project, the MP describes what happens to the skulls of Algerian resistance fighters by displaying them in French museums as “a despicable and inappropriate practice,” which “cannot be defended or preserved, and the dignity of the people whose bodies have deteriorated in this way must be restored without delay or procedural requirements that rise to the level of the delay tactic.

MP Bilongo believes that “the final restitution of these skulls to their original homeland is inevitable,” for a “decent burial,” asserting that “this would be part of a comprehensive recognition process by the French state of the criminal practices in its former colonies, including Algeria”.