Journal of Turkish Weekly, Turkey
May 9 2006
President Bouteflika: France’s colonisation of Algeria was long,
brutal and genocidal
* Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has repeated his demand
that France should apologize to Algeria for the “genocidal” colonial
rule
By Mary S. Garden
PARIS (JTW) – France on Tuesday tried to play down attack by Algerian
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, after he repeated that France’s
colonisation of the north African country had been “genocidal”.
The French foreign ministry in Paris said it saw Bouteflika’s
comments, made on Monday on the 61st anniversary of a massacre of
Algerian civilians by French troops, as leaving room for cooperation.
However Paris has not recognised the Algerian Genocide.
In a declaration read at the site of the massacre in Guelma, eastern
Algeria, Bouteflika described France’s colonisation of his country,
which it ruled from 1830 to 1962, as “long, brutal, genocidal”.
Algeria, he said, had a “fundamental right” to a “public and solemn
apology for the crime of colonisation committed againist our people”.
The French foreign ministry declined to comment on Bouteflika’s use
of the word “genocidal”.
Bouteflika declared last month that colonial France had committed a
“genocide of Algerian identity”.
‘FRENCH REGIME WAS LIKE NAZI REGIME IN ALGERIA’
Relations between France and Algeria have been strained since
February 2005 when the French government passed a law – later
repealed – requiring schools to stress the “positive role” of French
colonialism.
Bouteflika, in a statement last year, likened the term’s French
administration to the Nazi regime, as he claimed furnaces set up in
Guelma were reminiscent of those used by the Nazis.
A French apology would be the only way to transform the chronic
stagnation of relations into a real friendship, Bouteflika told in a
commemoration ceremony held for the 61st anniversary of the massacre
of Algerians 0n 8 May 2006.
Plans for a “friendship treaty” between the two countries have been
shelved indefinitely.
France occupied the North African country for 132 years, and 1.5
million people were killed in the 1954-1962 Algerian war of
independence.
In 1945, pro-independence protests in the cities of Setif, Guelma,
and Kherrata were suppressed in a bloody show of strength by the
French army, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of Algerians;
according to the Americans this figure is 40-50,000, while the French
say the figure is closer to 20,000.
Although the lower house of the French parliament approved a bill on
January 18, 2001 which publicly recognizes the Armenians claims as
genocide, France still refuses to even apologize for the massacre of
Algerian freedom fighters, let alone recognize it as genocide.