French colonial history at the heart of a new law passed on the other side of the Mediterranean. The Algerian Parliament adopted this Wednesday, December 24, a text intended to make the French state bear “legal responsibility for its colonial past in Algeria and the tragedies it caused.” While tensions between Paris and Algiers remain very strong, Algerian deputies spoke unanimously in favor of this bill. The parliamentarians also greeted his approval with applause, wearing scarves in the colors of their country’s flag around their necks.
Request for “apologies” to France
In detail, what does this new law contain? She considers it “an inalienable right for the Algerian State and people” to see France provide “complete and fair compensation for all material and moral damage” linked to its colonization of the country, between 1830 and 1962, the date of the Evian Accords marking the end of the Algerian War. Even more precisely, “official apologies” are requested from Paris by Algiers, as well as “full reparations” for its past actions. A whole series of historical episodes, described as “colonial crimes” by the document, are listed: “extrajudicial executions”, “practice of physical and psychological torture”, “systematic looting of wealth”…
The question of the 17 French nuclear tests carried out in Algeria in the Sahara desert between 1960 and 1966 is also raised. The new law requires that France work to decontaminate the areas affected by these operations, but also that it indicates to Algiers precisely which areas may have been dug in order to bury toxic waste. Some residents of the regions where the tests were carried out in the 1960s still experience health problems today due to the lack of decontamination of these areas.
The text also requests the restitution of all property transferred outside Algeria, including the national archives. Furthermore, domestically, it provides for prison sentences and a ban on civil and political rights for any person “promoting” colonization or denying that it is a crime. These facts are now considered imprescriptible. Finally, this law qualifies as “high treason” the “collaboration of the harkis”, the name given to the Algerian auxiliaries of the French army.
Primarily symbolic in scope
Concretely, the vote of the Algerian Parliament will not generate legal repercussions for Paris. “Legally, this law has no international scope and cannot therefore bind France,” Hosni Kitouni, researcher in the history of the colonial period at the British University of Exeter, told AFP. However, according to this expert, “it marks a moment of rupture in the memorial relationship with France”. The vote on this text, above all symbolic, comes at a time when the two countries are stuck in persistent discord since the recognition by French President Emmanuel Macron of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara – a region where the separatists of the Polisario Front are supported by Algiers.
The French authorities, like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, did not wish to comment on the content of the text before its vote. If the release of the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, pardoned in mid-November thanks to negotiations led by Germany, could have suggested a de-escalation, the hope fizzled out.
The case of French journalist Christophe Gleizes, still imprisoned in Algeria and whose sentence Paris contests, is an illustration of this. Once mentioned, a meeting between Emmanuel Macron and Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on the sidelines of the G20 in Johannesburg (South Africa) in November ultimately never took place.
