Macron’s Statement on 1961 Protest Killings Insufficient, Critics Say | Emmanuel Macron

[ad_1]

French historians have accused President Emmanuel Macron of failing to fully admit state responsibility for the police killing of dozens of Algerians during peaceful protests 60 years ago.

In addition, they called on the authorities to make the historical archives fully accessible to researchers, in order to enable them to investigate the massacres which, even today, remain shrouded in official secrecy.

Elyse’s statement on Sunday that the police actions of October 17, 1961 were crimes inexcusable to the republic and brutal, violent and bloody drew criticism from all quarters.

He disappointed those who hoped for an outright apology for the police attacks, including throwing protesters into the Seine, where they drowned, while the far right accused the president of believing in propaganda anti-French.

Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, president of the association October 17, 1961: Against oblivion and professor of political science, declared that the declaration of the French president was a small step which allows Emmanuel Macron not to take a bigger one.

This is well below what we were entitled to expect, said Le Cour Grandmaison.

Macron laid a wreath near the Pont de Bezons, the Pont de Bezons, on Sunday. Photograph: Reuters

On October 17, 1961, around 30,000 Algerians gathered in Paris to protest a discriminatory curfew imposed on them by the authorities. The then Parisian police chief, Maurice Papon, a former Nazi collaborator, ordered the police to crack down on the protesters. Police then shot them and gathered panicked crowds on bridges over the Seine, throwing people into the river. Historians say between 50 and 120 were killed, while Algeria said the death toll could reach 300.

Believe, or only make believe for a moment, that Maurice Papon was able to act throughout the month of October 1961, and on October 17 in particular, on his own initiative and that the responsibility for the massacre of Algerian demonstrators does not lie with the Prime Minister and therefore the entire government, is a bad catch, Le Cour Grandmaison said on France 24 television.

Gilles Manceron, a historian specializing in the colonial history of France, agreed that Macron’s declaration did not go far enough. It was a state crime, not a prefect’s crime, Manceron said.

The French president, who laid a wreath in memory of the victims over the weekend, is the first to officially acknowledge that the police committed crimes that night, despite not giving any official speeches and ‘a statement released by Elyse did not apologize.

Benjamin Stora, historian and author of a report on French colonialism and the Algerian war submitted to Elyse in January, defended Macron, claiming to have taken a step forward.

This is the first time that a head of state has used the word crime and associated it with the state and therefore with the republic, Stora told France Inter.

[ad_2]