Algeria’s relations with France, its colonial metropolis between 1830-1962, have reached one of their lowest points in 63 years of independence. As a culmination of a spiral of diplomatic rupture, triggered in 2024 by the , the Algerian Parliament unanimously approved this Wednesday a law that declares French colonization a “state crime.” The Maghreb country demands “formal excuses” and “compensation” from the European power for the killings and torture, the racial discrimination of the native population, the looting of resources and the domination of more than 130 years.
The approved legal text, of immediate internal validity but of difficult international legal repercussion when it comes to demanding compensation, establishes that the “French State must assume the responsibilities of its colonial past in Algeria and the tragedies it has engendered.” Algeria presents the adopted law as “an act of sovereignty” and “a clear message, both externally and internally, that the national historical memory cannot be erased or negotiated,” in the words of the president of the National Popular Assembly (Lower House of Parliament), Brahim Bughali, during a previous legislative debate cited by the state news agency APS.
Algeria demands “full and equitable compensation for all material and moral damages caused by French colonization,” including the decontamination of the firing ranges where France carried out its first nuclear tests. Between 1960 and 1966 (until four years after independence), France had explosions that left a lasting radiation trail that affected some 40,000 civilians, mostly nomads.
In the domestic sphere, the new Algerian legislation provides for penalties of up to five years in prison, deprivation of civil and political rights and high fines for anyone who “promotes” colonization or denies its nature as a crime. Given the highly symbolic nature at the international level of the norm approved in the midst of the diplomatic crisis with Algeria, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs has declined to comment on “a political debate in another country” during its legislative processing. Since the French president, Emmanuel Macron, recognized before his arrival at the Elysée in 2017 that the French colonization of Algeria constituted “a crime against Humanity,” France has not taken any further steps in terms of historical memory about the North African country.
After the publication of the report entrusted by the president to Macron, he warned that France does not plan to apologize or declare its regret for the 130 years of colonization of Algeria, although it did show its willingness to promote “symbolic acts” of reconciliation and tributes to the victims who have been forgotten.
Stora, born in 1950 in the then French Algeria, proposed the creation of a “memory and truth” commission made up of experts from both countries. Among other measures, he proposed the commemoration of massacres of Algerians in France or of the Harkis—Muslims who fought with France against independence—as well as the location of the remains of missing persons on both sides.
The conquest of the then Ottoman province of Algeria from 1830 was carried out amid massacres, armed revolts, deportations of the local population, and was followed by the massive arrival of French settlers who occupied the most productive areas of its territory. Between 1954 and 1962, the French Army waged a bloody colonial war against Algerian nationalist forces in which between 500,000 and 1.5 million Algerian deaths were recorded, according to different historical sources.
French imprisoned
The clash between Algiers and Paris worsened in 2024 with the sentence to five years in prison for the 81-year-old man suffering from cancer. Sansal, author of some of the most translated and read recent novels in the French language, was tried for “attacking the integrity of the State”, after having declared to a French magazine that part of the Algerian territory was part of Morocco.
Sansal has been used as a “hostage” and “scapegoat”, according to his lawyers, in the crossfire of the diplomatic conflict that arose between Algiers and Paris over the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara. The president of Algeria, Abdelmayid Tebún, pardoned him last November, after having remained behind bars for a year, thanks to the mediation of Germany.
A month later, French sports journalist Christophe Gleizes, 36, was sentenced in Algeria to seven years in prison for “advocating terrorism.” His family has also requested a presidential pardon for the reporter, imprisoned since June after being detained in the Berber region east of Algiers while writing a report on the football club in the city of Tizi Uzu, whose president is part of the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK), considered terrorist by the Government of Algiers. In an event held in Paris on the 14th, the MAK proclaimed the independence of Kabylia in an action without repercussions for Algerian Berber nationalism.
