The Paris police chief, Maurice Papon, who received carte blanche from the highest authorities, including de Gaulle, launched, with 7,000 police officers, a bloody repression. There will be 11,730 arrests, and perhaps many more than 200 deaths, drowned or executed, among Algerians.
This crime at the heart of the French State has still not been officially recognized even though supporters of Nostalgia advocate the promotion of positive French work during colonization in school curricula!!! [1]
On October 27, 1961, Claude Bourdet, then municipal councilor of Paris and also a journalist at France-Observateurhad questioned the prefect of police, Maurice Papon, in the middle of the Paris municipal council on the accuracy of the facts which were read in the Parisian press, namely the recovery in the Seine of 150 corpses of Algerians since October 17, 1961 between Paris and Rouen.
“Mr. Police Prefect”
Speech by Claude Bourdet at the Paris Municipal Council, October 27, 1961
The silences of Mr Maurice Papon
“I come to the facts first. There is little need to expand. Will I talk about these Algerians lying on the sidewalk, bathed in blood, dead or dying, to whom the Police forbade anyone to help? Will I talk about this pregnant woman, near Place de la République, who a police officer hit on the stomach? Will I talk about these buses that were emptied in front of a police station in the Latin Quarter, forcing the Algerians who came out to parade under a veritable guard of honor, under batons which fell on them as they exited? ? I have testimonies from French people and testimonies from foreign journalists. Will I talk about this Algerian arrested in the metro and who was carrying a child in his arms? As he didn’t raise his arms quickly enough, he was almost knocked to the ground with a pair of slaps. It’s not very serious, it’s simply a child who is scarred for life!
I only want to mention the most serious facts and ask questions. These are facts which, if verified, cannot be explained by a violent reaction in the heat of the moment. These are facts that deserve a serious, detailed, impartial, contradictory investigation.
First of all, is it true that during this day, there were no gunshot wounds within the Police? Is it true that the Police radio vans announced at the start of the demonstration ten deaths among the police, a message necessarily picked up by all the brigades… and which must therefore have greatly excited everyone police officers? Perhaps it was a mistake, perhaps it was sabotage, we should know; and perhaps, on the other hand, it was not true. This is why I want an investigation.
Likewise, is it true that a large number of the injured or dead were hit by bullets of the same caliber as that of a large factory which supplies the police with weapons? That a large proportion of these bullets were fired at point blank range? A hospital survey can provide this information. It is clear that this is not just any investigation and that those who would carry it out should be covered by its official character and know that they would not risk anything by telling the truth.
And here is the most serious thing: is it true that in the “isolation courtyard” of the City, around fifty demonstrators, apparently arrested in the area around Boulevard Saint-Michel, died? And what happened to their bodies? Is it true that there were many bodies removed from the Seine? In press circles, and not only in left-wing press circles, in the editorial offices of the news press, there is talk of 150 bodies removed from the Seine between Paris and Rouen. Is it true or is it not true? This must be known. An inquiry with the competent services should make it possible to verify this. This implies, I said, not a police or administrative investigation, that is to say an investigation by the Police into itself, but a very broad investigation, with the participation of elected officials.
– The essential
I now come to the point which is essential for me: the one which concerns you directly, Mr. Prefect of Police. My plan is not to pillory the Parisian police, to claim that they are made up of savages, even though there have been many acts of savagery. My project is to explain why so many men, who are probably no better or worse than any of us, acted as they did. Here I think that, to the extent that you partially admit these facts, you have an explanation. It was also given earlier: it lies in the Algerian attacks, in the losses that the Police suffered.
It is only a question of explaining, on a subjective level, the attitude of the Police, this explanation is, in part, sufficient. We have paid attention to the memory of police officers killed on duty often enough here to know this, but that does not explain everything. And above all, these subjective explanations are not enough. The individual police officer fights back when attacked, but we have to look at things further. What is happening comes from a certain conception of the all-out war waged against Algerian nationalism. Here you can answer me: “Would you have wanted us to let the enemy act freely among us? And even commit crimes with impunity? » On this level, the logic is inevitable: the enemy is the enemy; it’s about breaking it by any means, or almost. But then the enemy responds in kind, and we arrive where we are today. It was impossible for there to be an all-out war in Algeria and for nothing to happen in France. But what I am saying – and this seems to me to be true for everything that has been said here, on the right, about the power of the FLN in France, and about the threat it represents – is that it could have making the situation infinitely more serious than he made it.
– War to the limit
The Algerian leaders acted not out of feelings of humanity but in their own interest, because they wanted to be able to organize the Algerians in France, because they wanted to “collect” as has been said and that, you know well, in general much more through consent than through terror. There was also, probably, the influence of a certain number of Algerian executives, in particular these union executives of the UGTA, very rooted in the French union movement, very close to the metropolitan population, hostile to terrorism. Unfortunately, it was them, precisely because they were known, spotted, sighted, who were the first arrested, often deported to Algeria, and we unfortunately do not know, as you know, what became of these people.
