Khalida Toumi Hampered Transfer Of Skulls of Algerian Personalities From France

The head of the Algerian Organization against Colonial Thought, Lawyer Fatima Zahra Ben Brahem, has urged the ministers of the Mujahideen and culture Tayeb Zitouni and Azzedine Mihoubi respectively, ahead of the beginning of the November celebrations to strive to retrieve the skulls of the Algerian resistance figures now displayed at the Museum of Man in Paris, numbering 37 skulls and registered among the 1,500 skeletons held, up to now, by France since its heinous colonial rule in Algeria between 1830 and 1962.

Ben Brahem, said to this effect that the former Minister of Culture, Khalida Toumi, took a share of responsibility in blocking the completion of the transfer of these skulls after she had completed all the proceedings with the other party, France. 

She said that the issue remained hostage to the political calculations to the dismay of families of the Algerian resistance figures, urging to the latter to assign a lawyer to transfer the skulls of their relatives and bury them with dignity and to convey such a request to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs so as to give it an international character.

Regarding the criminalization of France and the burning file of the archives of Algeria, Ms Zahra Ben Brahem  affirmed in a statement to “Echorouk”, that more than 20 Arab and European countries are ready to grant archives of historical documents taken from the country during the French colonial period in Algeria, but there is no will from the officials concerned for this purpose, as the country’s ongoing financial crisis could adversely affect the retrieval of these archives, as she put it.

She said that what is demanded today by Algerian historians and researchers, is the retrieval of the Algerian archives ranging between the period between 1830 and 1900, now held in France, adding: “We know that there are those who fear for their own vested interests with the public disclosure of some secrets as part of the retrieval of the archives of Algeria notably for the period ranging from 1954 to 1962,” Ms. Ben Brahem underlined.

The head of the Algerian Organization against Colonial Thought called on the Ministry of Mujahideen or war veterans to issue payment cards for the benefit of Algerian researchers in order to facilitate their access to the archives of Algeria in France, stressing that the price of one document costs about 75 Euros, and this endeavor, she said, should be the responsibility of the state.

According to Ms. Ben Brahem, the acquisition of Algeria of its archives withheld in France is a first step to criminalize the horrendous French use of nuclear explosions or the so-called nuclear tests carried out in the of Algerian Sahara in 1960, confirming that the remnants of these bombings or what it called “poisonous inheritance” will kill many Algerians in silence for 24,400 years, after the local environment was heavily contaminated with plutonium.

She thus urged the French government to build two hospitals for the treatment of cancer in Algeria from its own costs, one for children and another for adults, stressing that 50 years after the French nuclear explosions, cancer has begun to steadily make its way at the expense of Algerians residing in the southern part of the country.