Cas revealed in mid-October by The PointPresident Emmanuel Macron has recognizedthe 1is November, on the occasion of the 70e anniversary of the outbreak of the war of independence, that “Larbi Ben M'hidi, national hero for Algeria and one of the six leaders of the FLN who launched the insurrection of 1is November 1954, was murdered by French soldiers placed under the command of General Aussaresses.
In the long press release, the Élysée specifies that “the recognition of this assassination attests that the work of historical truth, which the President of the Republic initiated with President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, will continue. This is the role assigned to the joint commission of historians, set up by the two heads of state, and whose conclusions the President of the Republic recently validated.”
The Élysée does not detail what these “conclusions” are, nor the future agenda of the joint commission of Algerian-French historians whose work seems, for the moment, frozen, according to the declarations of one of its members. Algerian.
In mid-October, this same historian spoke anonymously in an Algerian newspaper. “We refuse the drip-drip policy and, for us, all martyrs have the same rank,” he reacted in anticipation.
“Another trick” by Emmanuel Macron
In the absence of an Algerian reaction, other voices spoke out in the media and social networks to reject this recognition. “Macron obviously sought to spoil the big celebration of 1is November by recognizing one crime in a million. There memorial annuity is rather on the side of the French right, nostalgic for French Algeria,” tweets former minister and ex-ambassador Abdelaziz Rahabi.
“Algeria should not be concerned by the distillation of memory and its segmentation by Macron and the French establishment. […]. It is necessary to reach another level of denunciation: that targeting the entire colonial reality and to take the inherent measures,” reacts political journalist Otman Lahiani.
“Was there ever any doubt about France’s responsibility? And what good is recognition if it is not accompanied by reparations? It is yet another trick by the French president to try to attenuate the political, diplomatic and symbolic effect of his visit to Morocco and the unworthy arrangements that he has just conceded to the detriment of the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination,” slams , for his part, the historian Hosni Kitouni, who alludes to the official French commitment, since this summer, on the Moroccan line concerning Western Sahara – responsible for the current crisis between Algiers and Paris – and the recent visit of President Macron in Morocco.
ALSO READ Macron in Morocco: Airbus, Sahara & OQTFThe French researcher, Fabrice Riceputi agrees: “We have understood it well – especially in Algeria – Macron cynically uses the memory of Ben M'hidi as a bargaining chip with Algeria, this truncated recognition being supposed in his eyes to compensate the recent rapprochement of France with Morocco. » “This approach, devoid of any meaning, is linked to the political timing in which Macron wants to move the lines of relations with Algeria in parallel with its push towards Morocco”, supports Otman Lahiani.
What responsibility?
As for the act of recognition itself, the historian Fabrice Riceputi, who works in particular on the period of the “battle of Algiers” (1956-1957) and the missing of the time, calls into question the “typically Macronian tropism” which “carefully avoids the question of political responsibility for this crime of extrajudicial execution”.
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Kangaroo of the day
Answer
“Contrary to what a lazy French press writes, “the responsibility of France”, that is to say of the French State, is in no way recognized. Only Aussaresses is designated as guilty and responsible for the crime, with “soldiers”, says the press release. [de l’Élysée, NDLR]which therefore excludes an involvement of the military institution as such. In other words, the crime would be a blunder committed by junior soldiers,” he writes.
ALSO READ Here’s why you should read “Macron’s Algeria” The researcher recalls, regarding the repression against Algerian demonstrators on October 17, 1961 in Paris, “that the Élysée had designated in 2021 as sole responsible only Maurice Papon, convicted in 1998 for complicity in crimes against humanity for his assistance in the deportation of the Jews of Gironde. As if the police chief had not followed the instructions of the Debré government by violently repressing the demonstrators.”
