Smoking out of Dahra caves in Mostaganem: Discovery of bones of Algerians choked to death by French colonel Pélissier
166 years to this day have elapsed since the tragic smoking out of the caves of the Dahra near Mostaganem in western Algeria where loads of bones of Algerians asphyxiated by French colonial forces have recently been discovered.
- Sinister French colonel Aimable Pélissier didn’t hesitate to choke to death on June 20th 1845 up to 1200 Algerians including men, women, children and elderly from the Ouled Riah tribe who had found shelter in the caves of Ghar El Frechich in the Dahra ( Triangle of Tènès, Cherchell and Miliana ).
- By sanctioning such inhuman measures, Bugeaud granted tacit approval for his subordinates to undertake further acts of aggression. Discipline was impossible to maintain when French soldiers were allowed to burn and pillage, and Algerian civilians were repeatedly tortured, raped or slaughtered outright by French colonial forces.
- In June 1845, Colonel Aimable Pelissier cowardly trapped a large group of Algerians in the caves of Dahra in the coastal mountains north of Chellif. After perfunctory negotiations, he ordered a fire to be built in the mouth of the caves, and over one thousand men, women, and children were atrociously asphyxiated. $
- “All native populations which do not accept our conditions must be despoiled,” as Lucien de Montagnac, another French officer, explained in letters home to his sister, “Everything must be seized, devastated, without age or sex distinction: grass must not grow any more where the French colonial army has put the foot.”
- We have established ourselves in the center of the country … burning killing, pillaging everything”, he declared.
- However, when Pelissier’s report, describing the atrocity he had committed in lurid and self-congratulatory terms, was publicly released, many Frenchmen were horrified by such maddening savagery unleashed by the French colonial troops against innocent Algerians whose only fault then was to withstand foreign occupation and to stand up for their usurped dignity and freedom.
- Time has passed by but the Algerians’ memory is still vivid about the heinous misdeeds and horrendous crimes against humanity committed by French colonialism in Algeria between 1830 and 1962.