Has the Work of the Memory Commission Reached a Dead End?

The works of the Algeria-French commission in charge of discussing the memory file are going very slowly, creating resentment of the Algerian side, which appears to be waiting for the best, after more than a year and a half of the announcement of its establishment during the visit of the French President Emmanuel Macron to Algeria.

Algerian Press Agency indicated in the wake of the French authorities’ decision to prevent a public gathering of Algerian activists in the capital, Paris, last Sunday, in commemoration of the Martyr’s Day, and presented justifications such as “avoiding chaos”, but the Algerian side did not like it.

APS, which is considered an informal speaker in the name of the public authorities, spoke about the failure of the French position on the issue of memory and wrote: “Once again, the Algerian Community in France, and with exceptional patriotic enthusiasm, responded and thus confirms its strong attachment to the motherland. Unfortunately, Alas, this meeting will not take place, as was to be expected, an unprecedented gathering of Algerians in Paris, on the day of the commemoration of the Martyr’s National Day to express loud and clear attachment to the History of their country, can only be banned by the French authorities, whose position on the question of memory has not evolved, still creating confusion between the aggressed and the aggressor, the colonized and the colonizer”.

What is included in the telegram, especially the phrase “the non -development of the French position on the issue of memory”, is evidence that the Algerian authorities are not satisfied with the path of talks (negotiations) between Algerian historians and their French counterparts, in the mixed memory commission, which has not achieved its objectives yet after a year and a half, which intercedes for it to continue to discuss this sensitive file.

The last 4th meeting of this commission was chaired, from the Algerian side, by the historian Mohamed Lahcen Zeghidi, and on the French side, Benjamin Stora, in Paris last January 25, a meeting whose chapters centred around the looted and stored Algerian archive in the French basements.

The last meeting ended without setting a date for the next meeting, which opened the way for many questions. France International Radio, “France Inter”, had mentioned some signs of divergence between the two sides of the Algerian-French memory commission, during its interview with Benjamin Stora on February 8.

France Inter asked Benjamin Stora about the committee’s recent meeting in Paris and the areas of disagreement, saying: “Algerian historians are demanding the restitution of the archives, particularly those of Aix-en-Provence, while it seems that you prefer to talk about free access to these archives. Is there no point of divergence?
Benjamin Stora denied the existence of differences: “No, there are no differences”. However, he left the door open to questions by preferring the option of copying the looted archive instead of restituting the original according to what the Algerian authorities have been calling for for decades; when he said; “Because, you know, now there is a new element concerning the old problem of restitution, which is completely legitimate and very old on the part of the Algerians. The new element is digitisation, the digital revolution, that is, requests for recovery today are much less important than requests for digitisation of archives, transfer and sharing of archives. This does not preclude the possibility of recovering original documents that have symbolic value.”

The restitution of the stolen archive is considered a sovereign issue for the Algerian or any other state. Still, it seems that the French party is not ready, at least at present to fold this sensitive file, despite the great concern shown by the French President, Emmanuel Macron, personally, to overcome this dilemma. This can be observed in the responses of Benjaman Stora about the difficulty of gathering French parties in one position to produce a law that allows the authorities in Paris to meet the calls of their Algerian counterpart to restitute the looted Algerian archive.