Macron decries 'inexcusable' Algerian protest massacre in Paris
This was terrorism most foul. The French were pissed off over both Vietnam and Algeria
w.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/16/macron-decries-inexcusable-paris-algeria-protest-massacre
President Emmanuel Macron has condemned as “inexcusable” a deadly crackdown by Paris police on a 1961 protest by Algerians, the scale of which was covered up for decades by French authorities.
Speaking at the Saturday commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the bloodshed, Macron told relatives and activists that the crackdown on the protest under the command of notorious Paris police chief Maurice Papon was an “unforgivable crime”.
He acknowledged several dozen protesters were killed, “their bodies thrown into the River Seine” and paid tribute to the memory of the victims.
The precise number of victims has never been made clear and some activists fear several hundred people could have been killed.
On the night of October 17, 1961, police attacked the demonstration by 25,000 pro-National Liberation Front (FLN) Algerians protesting against a curfew imposed on Algerians.
The march was repressed “brutally, violently and in blood”, Macron’s office said in a statement.
Macron “recognised the facts: that the crimes committed that night under Maurice Papon are inexcusable for the Republic”, the Elysee said.
“This tragedy was long hushed up, denied or concealed,” it added.
The rally was called in the final year of France’s increasingly violent attempt to retain Algeria as a North African colony, and in the middle of a bombing campaign targeting mainland France by pro-independence fighters.
Papon was in the 1980s revealed to have been a collaborator with the occupying Nazis in World War II and complicit in the deportation of Jews. He was convicted of crimes against humanity but later released.
= new reply since forum marked as read
again because the West has been slaughtering innocents for centuries
How in the hell did he go unpunished not only when France was liberated in 1944 but in the 1980s ?
This another case of rich & powerful people getting away with their crimes?
In 1998, Papon was convicted of crimes against humanity. ie: deporting Jews. So I guess he finally
did pay for being a collaborator. I gathered a lot of people saw him as a hero.
