SALSES-LE-CHATEAU: Nearly 300 harkis and their descendants gathered on Saturday in front of the Rivesaltes camp memorial (Pyrénées-Orientales) to ask the State to “restore” their “honour”, beyond the law “forgiveness” compared to “crumbs”.
“To turn the page without tearing it, we are asking politicians for a reparation law commensurate with our suffering, for all,” Hocine Louanchi, president of the Confederation of French Muslims repatriated from Algeria, told AFP. their friends, the origin of the gathering.
Former French soldiers, pied-noirs and local elected officials, including the RN mayor of Perpignan, Louis Aliot, also made the trip.
“We are here to denounce the date of our massacre. March 19 is not the end of the war. March 19 is the date on which France disarmed my father and handed him over to the enemy,” says Mr. Louanchi.
Up to 200,000 harkis had been recruited as auxiliaries to the French army during the Algerian war of independence (1954-1962), but following the Evian agreements confirming the French defeat, the French government rejected their massive repatriation.
Only 42,000 of them were evacuated to France by the army. Others arrive there clandestinely and in total about 90,000 people – harkis and their families – arrive in France between 1962 and 1965, half of whom land in camps, where babies and children will lose their lives in particular for lack of care.
Those who remain, considered traitors by the new Algerian regime, are victims of harsh reprisals.
The text of the law passed in February recognizes “the conditions unworthy of reception” in France and provides for financial “reparation” for this damage. The measure concerns “harkis veterans and their wives, welcomed after 1962 in + mainland +, but also their children who stayed there, or were even born there”.
“Do you think that with 100,000 dead it is enough to ask for forgiveness? What we ask first is the restoration of the honor of the harkis. We have to go down in history. Forgiveness they can keep it”, says Mr. Louanchi, who arrived at the Rivesaltes camp with his mother in 1964, when he was 12 years old.
“What we are given are crumbs!”, He said, calling in particular on the State to grant the Legion of Honor to all harkis still alive.
This rally comes as France commemorates the 60th anniversary of the Evian Accords and the ceasefire in Algeria on Saturday, with a ceremony where President Emmanuel Macron will once again plead for a “appeasement” of memories on both shores. of the Mediterranean.