Hollande: “French Government Abandoned Harkis”

French President, François Hollande, admitted on Sunday, “the responsibility of the French government to abandon the Algerian Harkis who fought with the French army during the liberation revolution, in official ceremonies to honor them in Paris.

Holland said during a speech on the occasion of the French National Day of Harkis, September 25, at the National Hotel in the Square of Les Invalides in Paris, that he acknowledged the responsibilities of the French government to abandon the Harkis and the massacres that against those who stayed in Algeria, and the inhuman conditions of the reception of those who were brought to France”.

The meeting was attended by candidates for the Presidential Elections 2017, like the former President Nicolas Sarkozy, the candidate Jean-Francois Copé and Chairperson of the National Front Party, Marine Le Pen.

Debate is over the so-called “suffering” of the Harkis on a regular basis in France, after the founding of the National Day of Harkis in 2003, it comes the turn of François Hollande to recognize the responsibility of France in abandoning Harkis in Algeria after independence.

According to historians, after the end of the Algerian War in 1962, France left about 55 to 75.000 Harkis in Algeria, and received about 60.000 of them only, while their population today is 500.000 people.

Francois Hollande, the Socialist candidate for the French presidency promised, ahead of the Presidential Elections of 2012 that he will recognize the “responsibility to his country to abandon them”, stressing their redress if he’ll be elected as President of France.

Previously, statements of the former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, raised sharp criticism when he said, “Who wants to become a French, should speak French, and live like the French (…) and when you become a French then your grandparents will become the Gauls”.

Sarkozy paid tribute to the Harkis and received a delegation of them.

His statements have drawn wide criticism in the ranks of the right wing, while the President of the Socialist government, Manuel Valls, responded by saying; “If we were French, then it is not due to our origins”.

With the approach of every Presidential Election in France, the file of Harkis and Pied Noirs comes back to the forefront, and raises the heated arguments between the center, the left and right poles, on the grounds that they are an important voting bloc that each party seeks to induce and play on its demands.

Number of Harkis and their families is about three million people, or 7% of the electorate in France, who are traditionally counted on the right and the extreme right wings.

Harkis voted in the Presidential Elections of 2012 in favor of the candidate Nicolas Sarkozy and Marine Le Pen.