MONSIEUR SARKOZY, LOOK IN THE MIRROR AND SEE WHO THE REAL GENOCIDE PERPETRATOR IS
Today’s Zaman
Dec 22 2011
Turkey
The National Assembly, the lower house of the French parliament,
yesterday passed a bill that criminalizes the denial of the Armenian
claims concerning the 1915 incidents.
The bill introduces a punishment of up to one year in prison and
a fine of 45,000 euros for those who deny the genocide officially
recognized by French laws. Thus, although it had served as the cradle
of enlightenment and freedoms for the whole world with the French
revolution of 1789, this country paved the way for the creation
of a new dogma, just as was the case in the Middle Ages, dominated
by an abysmal fanaticism and darkness. With this outdated effort,
French President Nicolas Sarkozy betrayed, first, France and, then,
universal freedom of thought and expression. By introducing bans
to one side of the debate about a controversial issue that must be
settled by historians and just ahead of the presidential elections,
he showed everyone what democracy a la Sarkozy is.
Given his now-well-established interest in creating dogmas via
political and legal means over controversial incidents of the past, he
should have turned a critical eye to France’s unquestionable colonial
past instead of peering into Turkey’s dubious history. Banning views
and ideas that may be voiced against a so-called “genocide” to which
Armenians were allegedly subjected to in 1915, even before offering
an official apology for the bloody massacres France had committed
in Algeria until the very recent past, i.e., the second half of the
20th century, as well as for the French mass killings in other African
countries, Indochina and in the French colonies in the islands could
only be expected from a mealymouthed jester of French politics called
Sarkozy. Well, Sarkozy knows better than me the recent history of
France’s bloody colonization and invasion, but I still feel obliged
to refresh people’s memories about it.
Any reference to French oppression and massacres quickly bring to mind
the mass slaughters in Algeria. Being under French occupation for 132
years between 1830 and 1962, Algeria always engaged in a struggle for
independence, albeit with occasional interruptions. On May 8, 1945,
i.e., just in the wake of World War II, defenseless civilians rallied
in the city of Sétif demanding that French authorities should keep
their promises about Algeria’s independence, but they were raked with
machine guns, and thousands of Algerians died. According to Algerian
sources, at least 45,000 people were killed during this massacre. The
peak of the Algerian struggle for independence was between 1954 and
1962. During this period, colonialist and invading French troops
brutally slayed 1.5 million Algerians, torturing and ill-treating
hundreds of thousands.
Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the founding president of Algeria, said France
implemented genocide not only against the people, but also against
the identities and cultures of people in Algeria. French officers
confessed to the mass killings of Algerians. General Paul Aussaresses,
an intelligence officer who specialized in torture techniques,
said that he personally witnessed at least 1,509 people who had
been extra-judicially executed during his term of office in Algeria,
which started in 1955.
The uprising that started in Algeria on Nov. 1, 1945 continued until
the cease-fire declared on March 19, 1962. In order to truly make
sense of 1.5 million Algerians killed during this period, we should
visualize that 557 Algerians were brutally killed daily on average.
This figure should be enough to clearly show how brutal and ruthless
were the mass killings performed by French authorities in Algeria. One
of the reasons for such high death tolls is that French soldiers
specifically attacked crowded gatherings of Algerians. Thus, about 15
percent of Algeria’s population, which amounted to 8-10 million during
the struggle for independence, was killed by the French. The Algerian
massacre is not the only mass slaughter France undertook in Africa.
Indeed, it performed similar massacres in virtually all African
countries that it invaded and colonized with the intention of sucking
their human and national wealth to the full. During these massacres,
it was acting not with a dark Middle Ages mentality that had once
dominated the whole European continent, but with a modernist philosophy
of the 20th century when human rights, international law and similar
notions entered world literature.
For instance, by concluding agreements in 1861 and 1868 with the
Kings of Dahomey, who ruled where today’s Benin is located, the French
settled on the shores of Benin, and they attempted to invade the whole
country in 1882 and occupied the whole of Dahomey in 1904. All revolts
against the colonial administration were brutally suppressed by the
occupying French troops. Benin would only become independent on Aug.
1, 1960. In 1897, colonialist France completely invaded the territories
of Burkina Faso and maintained its domination by coercion and
bloodshed until the country acquired its independence in 1960. The
French colonialists also invaded Djibouti in 1888, changed its name to
French Somaliland (Côte francaise des Somalis). The Muslim people of
Djibouti never accepted French colonialism. The Muslim resistance was
suppressed by the French through pressure and oppression. In addition,
French colonialists performed an intensive missionary campaign to
convert Djiboutians to Christianity. The French not only banned
Islamic education, but also invested great efforts in Christianizing
the Muslim people of Djibouti, with limited success.
French invaders occupied all of Chad after extended struggles and a
war in 1911, and they destroyed numerous mosques and madrasas in the
aftermath of the occupation. They banned Islamic education to prevent
Muslims from learning about their religion. They jailed countless
scholars and tortured them to death. Some Muslim scholars had fled
to escape French tyranny. But, in 1917, French authorities announced
that a symposium would be held in Abéché for the reorganization
of religious life in Chad. Some 400 scholars gathered together in
the symposium hall with the hope that there would be a positive
development. However, French soldiers soon blockaded the hall and
killed all of the scholars inside. French massacres continued later.
Although Chad would officially get rid of the French occupation in
1957, the effects of French colonialism still continues.
Likewise, in Rwanda, Gabon, Guinea, Cameroon, Comoros Islands,
Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Tunisia, France maintained its
occupation and colonialism through oppression, pressure and massacres.
The French tyranny and massacres in Indochina deserve to be discussed
in a separate article. Shouldn’t Sarkozy face France’s proven and
ongoing sins before peering into others’ alleged sins and apologize
for the oppression and massacres committed by the country he is
currently representing?
First, look in the mirror, Monsieur Sarkozy! There, you’ll certainly
see who the real genocide perpetrator is.