Paris Flirts With Algeria On The Eve Of The National Day of Memory
Echoroukonline
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Algeria celebrates, on Saturday, the “National Day of Memory”, which coincides with the 76th anniversary of the tragic massacres of the eighth of May 1945, the French authorities sent a message to their Algerian counterpart, stating that Paris is continuing with measures of appeasement regarding the memory file initiated by the French President, Emmanuel Macron.
The French message to Algeria was carried by the French Press Agency (AFP), which quoted a French source close to the file as saying that “the recognition policy that President Macron committed to will continue, and several recommendations made by the Benjamin Stora report will be implemented.”
The French agency did not talk about the nature of the recommendations contained in the Stora report, and the Elysée Palace inmate intends to take them, nor did it provide an agenda or dates for the next step that Macron will take, within the framework of the “policy of recognition” that Paris has been talking about since the beginning of this year.
The official celebrations to commemorate the National Day of Memory, the first of its kind, is taking place under the slogan “Memory Refuses to Forget” in the city of Setif (eastern Algeria), which witnessed the colonial forces’ suppression of protests during which the Algerians demanded the independence of their country on the occasion of the Allies ’celebration of the victory over Nazism in World War II.
According to a statement by the Mujahideen Ministry, a march will be organized roaming the streets of the city of Setif, similar to the historic march on May 8, 1945, to the monument commemorating the place of the assassination of the scout, Bouzid Saal, the first victim in those massacres.
In late June, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune issued a decree to establish May 8 as a national day of memory, “in recognition of the tremendous sacrifices made by the Algerian people in the massacres of May 8, 1945, and during the outbreak of the liberation revolution on November 1, 1954”.
Today’s celebrations are expected to witness new demands from the Algerian authorities, headed by the president, who used to direct words to the nation on such major dates, such as apologizing for the crimes of colonialism and its practices contrary to universal norms, which France previously described as “crimes against humanity.”
Since Benjamin Stora presented his report to the French presidency on the twentieth of last January, Macron has taken nothing but symbolic steps at the level of memory as he called it, such as recognizing the responsibility of the French state in eliminating the fighter and the revolution’s lawyer, Ali Boumedjel, dropping the lie of his suicide that has been propagated for decades, and the declassification of the looted Algerian archive in the French cellars.
In the last few months, Algerian-French relations are experiencing multidimensional political crises, represented by the cancellation of the visit of the French Prime Minister, Jean Castex, to Algeria, and economic crises by not renewing many of the expired contracts of French dealers, in addition to the problem that remained for decades poisoning bilateral relations, which is the issue of memory and what is related to the remnants of the colonial past, which is the sensitive file through which the French president is trying to fix what his predecessors have corrupted.
