Government palace in Algiers, capital of Algeria, in 1899
The new law lists the “crimes of French colonization”, nuclear tests, extrajudicial executions, physical and psychological torture and “the systematic plundering of resources”, and stipulates that full compensation for all material and moral damages is an inalienable right of the Algerian State and people.
The Algerian parliament unanimously approved this Wednesday a law that criminalizes French colonization (1830-1962) and demands an official apology from France, which could worsen the already existing crisis between the two countries.
The president of the National People’s Assembly, Brahim Boughaliwelcomed the unanimous approval of the law, which holds the French State legally responsible for its colonial past in Algeria and the tragedies it generated, and which received a standing ovation from Algerian deputies, wearing scarves in the colors of the flag, according to the news agency France-Presse (AFP).
The new law lists the “crimes of French colonization“, considered imprescriptible, “nuclear tests”, “extrajudicial executions”, “the widespread practice of physical and psychological torture” and “the systematic plundering of resources”, and stipulates that “full and equitable compensation for all material and moral damages caused by French colonization is an inalienable right of the Algerian State and people”.
This project is not unprecedented in Algeria, note a. The text had already been presented twice to parliament before its adoption this Wednesday. For the deputies who are at the origin of the text, this bill is an “act of sovereignty and fidelity to national history”.
Despite your symbolic dimensionthe actual impact of the law on reparations claims may be limited.
“Legally, This law does not have international scope and, therefore, it cannot bind France,” he told AFP Hosni Kitouniresearcher in colonial history at the University of Exeter, in the United Kingdom, adding that, nevertheless, “it marks a turning point in the historical relationship with France”.
Asked last week about the vote, the spokesman for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pascal Confavreuxstated that he would not comment “political debates taking place in foreign countries“.
Boughali declared, for his part, that the initiative “was not aimed at any people, nor sought revenge or inciting resentment“.
The vote comes at a time when Paris and Algiers continue to be immersed in diplomatic crisisdue to the recognition by France, in the summer of 2024, of the autonomy for Western Sahara from Moroccowhich provides for the territory to be under the sovereignty of Rabat.
Several events since then andheightened tensionssuch as condemnation and arrest of French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansalwhich was eventually pardoned thanks to Germany’s intervention.
The issue of French colonization in Algeria continues to be one of the main sources of tension between Paris and Algiers.
A conquest of Algeria, begun in 1830was marked by mass murders and the destruction of their socioeconomic structuresas well as large-scale deportations, according to historians.
Numerous uprisings were suppressed before the bloody war of independence (1954-1962), which killed 1.5 million Algerians, according to Algeriaand 500 thousand people, including 400 thousand Algerians, according to French historians.
In 2021, French President Emmanuel Macron that France would adopt “symbolic acts” intended to recognize errors of the French colonial era in Algeria, but which I was not considering the “apology” request official intended by Algiers.
For Eliseu, which aims to improve the complex relationship between the two countries, the important thing is “getting out of the unsaid and denial” about the Algerian war (1954-1962), which continues to divide the two shores of the Mediterranean.
This was an “initiative to recognize the truth, but repentance or making excuses is out of the question”, said Eliseu, in a reference to the report that cites as an example the precedent of apology offered by Japan to South Korea and China about the Second World War, which did not reconcile these countries.
