Demonstrators chanted slogans calling for the deployment of all the events of 1961documents rational
Al Jazeera
Hundreds of people demonstrated in Paris on Monday, demanding the French authoritiesto recognize what they called the crimes committed against dozens of Algerians during thepeaceful demonstrations in the French capital in October / November 1961 to demand the independence of their country from French colonialism.
The demonstrators carried banners calling for the publication of all official Frenchdocuments relating to those events, considering that "recognition of the truth and will help to show what they turn the page on the colonial past between France and the Algerians."
The march began in front of the cinema "Rex" in Paris, the second circuit, and roamed the streets in the city before they reach the bridge Saint Michel, who police it from a number of supporters of the FLN in the Seine River, causing the death by drowning at the time. Theissue of the protest leaders and leading figures of the French left trade unionists and activists prominent local human rights organizations.
Deliberate denial
The MP Eva Jolie candidate for a coalition of parties, the environment for the upcoming presidential elections that he "no longer acceptable that the government continues to insiston the denial of what happened on October 17 / October 1961".
She pointed out that "172 bodies had been recovered from the River Seine after that day's bloody." Adding that the French state to "recognize its responsibility for the crime, anddeliberately to publish all documents relating thereto, and the bodies of victims to their families." Arguing that it is "the only way to overcome the hatred and bitterness left by that time odious."
For his part, considered the leader of the Left Front Jean-Luc Malanchon that "what happened on October 17 / October 1961 was an expression of state violence against therights of human beings," stressing that "the Algerian workers who were demonstratingdemand for freedom, they were closer to, such as France and the values that betrayed bythe police repression. "
The leftist leader stressed the need to "draw lessons from these events so as not to be repeated in the future." "When we see these days from time of the last acts of violencecommitted on racial grounds, we know how important the evoke these painful events for the future of co-existence in France."
A real massacreA member socialist in the French Senate, David Assouline stressed that France should "go beyond the author the official inventory of the time the proceeds of repression in the three dead and several wounded," stressing the need to "listen to researchers and historians who agree that what happened was a real massacre, which killed tens ofAlgerians say the least. "
Assouline and considered that the recognition of the crime will help "heal the wounds of the colonial past of the French of Algerian origin, and help open a new page in relations between France and Algeria."
And supported the same proposal coordinator of the "coalition of the 17th of October / November 1961", Mehdi Allawi, who felt that the adoption of the authorities of Paris, including committed against Algerians "It would be a gesture of respect for France all Algerians here and on the south bank of the Mediterranean."
He said human rights activist that the responsibility of the French state for the massacre "can not be denied," noting that "the Paris police chief Maurice Papon, who ordered the killing of demonstrators got the green light from the Minister of the Interior Roger Frey, and perhaps of the Prime Minister Michel Dupre and then-President General Charles de Gaulle ".
Source: Al Jazeera