Macron’s Calming-Down Initiatives Below The Level Of Crisis

French President, Emmanuel Macron, was keen to avoid improvisation during his participation, Saturday, in the ceremonies commemorating the martyrs who were killed during the protests that took place in Paris on October 17, 1961, and preferred to issue a written statement distributed to the media.

It seems that the French president was convinced that what he said impromptu more than two weeks ago in front of the youth of Algerian origin about Algeria and its past brought him great political troubles that he did not expect, so he preferred this time a written statement to avoid any slips of the tongue.

Unusually, the French president kept silent during the commemoration of the massacres, under the bridge where the Algerians protested on October 17, 1961, in response to a strict curfew imposed on Algerians who were demanding an end to French colonial rule in Algeria, before laying a wreath in honour of the victims, whose number was limited by colonial France to only three people, while the independent statistics talked about hundreds.

Macron observed a minute of silence on the edge of the Seine, where the Algerians were killed while handcuffed by the police of the criminal Maurice Papon in the French river.

His companions, who are families of the martyrs’ protesters and representatives of associations active in the field of memory, threw roses into the river, in a symbolic picture to honour the victims.

Minutes after the end of the commemoration ceremony, the Elysee Palace issued a statement denouncing “the unforgivable crimes against the Algerians on October 17, 1961.”

The statement of the French presidency said that “The head of state confessed the facts. The crimes that were committed that night under the authority of Maurice Papon (the Paris police chief at that time) were unjustifiable for the Republic”, according to the French press agency “AFP” it was clear here in the statement that the criminal Papon was held responsible, but the act was done in the name of the French state.

It is known that about 25,000 Algerians went out on October 17, 1961, in a protest in the French capital, Paris, at the invitation of the French Federation of the National Liberation Front, to express the rejection of the fifth decree of October, which prohibits only the Algerians from leaving their homes after 20:30, because they consider this decree a discriminatory and unacceptable decision.

As stated by the French presidency and historical writings, “In the evening of October 17, 1961, and despite the curfew, over 25.000 men, women and children left their homes and went to many places in Paris where they gathered, but the repression of the French police was very brutal.”

The French presidency’s admission that “the repression was brutal, violent and bloody.” In addition, about 12,000 protesters were arrested and transferred to the Pierre-de-Coubertin Stadium. During the protests, many Algerians were injured and dozens of them were killed, and hundreds, according to independent historians, perished after the French police threw them into the Seine river while they were Shackled brutally. To this day, the families still have not found the bodies of their relatives who disappeared that night”, the statement of the French presidency said.

Macron, the first French president to attend a memorial ceremony for those killed, observed a minute of silence in their memory at the Bezons bridge over the Seine on the outskirts of Paris where the protest started, but previous participations were limited to former Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, in addition to some elected officials.

Macron’s participation in the commemoration was the most he dared to offer to the Algerians who demand a French recognition of the crimes of the French state in Algeria during a century and 32 years, with an apology for those crimes, and then compensation for the wealth that was looted during that dark era in the history of Paris, whose officials are still evading responsibility for what their fathers did, except for some isolated initiatives that, in the opinion of Algerians, remain nothing but dust in the eyes.