Sixty years after the end of the Algerian war, the Parliament is preparing to adopt definitively on Tuesday, by a final vote of the Senate, a bill to ask “pardon” to the harkis, which opens the way to compensation for some families.
This text materializes a commitment made by President Emmanuel Macron, who, on September 20, had asked “pardon” to these Algerians who fought alongside the French army, but who were “abandoned” by France after the signing of the Evian Accords on March 18, 1962.
60 years later, the wounds opened by this deadly war (1954-1962, nearly 500,000 dead) are far from being healed. And the discussion of the text aroused a lot of emotion and passion in the hemicycles of the two assemblies, tensions also in the harkie community.
Deputies and senators reached a compromise text in a joint committee, which was approved last week for the last time by the National Assembly. The vote of the high assembly will therefore be worth definitive adoption.
This bill is “that of the recognition by the Nation of a deep tear and a French tragedy, of a dark page in our History”, argues the Minister in charge of Memory and Veterans Affairs Geneviève Darrieussecq.
The text recognizes “the conditions unworthy of reception” reserved for the 90,000 harkis and their families, who fled Algeria after independence.
Nearly half of them have been relegated to camps and “foresting hamlets”. “These places were places of banishment, which bruised, traumatized and sometimes killed”, according to the minister.
For these, the bill provides for “reparation” of the damage with, as a result, a lump sum taking into account the duration of the stay in these structures, from 2,000 to 15,000 euros.
The number of potential beneficiaries is estimated by the government at 50,000, for an overall cost of 302 million euros over approximately six years.
If the level of compensation was considered “low”, even “ridiculous” by some, the disappointments crystallized on the some 40,000 returnees excluded from compensation because they stayed in “urban cities”, where there were not deprived of freedom of movement, even though they experienced precarious living conditions.
– “Composite memory” –
Up to 200,000 harkis had been recruited as auxiliaries to the French army during the conflict between 1954 and 1962.
A day of homage of the Nation is devoted to them every September 25, since a decree of 2003. Symbolically, this date will be registered in the law.
The text creates a national commission for recognition and reparation, which will decide on requests for reparation and will contribute to the work of memory.
Two additional missions were assigned to him during the debates in the Senate hemicycle. The commission will thus be able to propose for the harkis combatants who request it “any measure of recognition and reparation” appropriate. It will also be able to propose changes to the systems to the government.
“Complex history”, “composite memory”: Emmanuel Macron has embarked on a series of strong acts to “appease” the memories of the Algerian war which continues to divide the French.
In a speech at the Elysée at the end of January, the Head of State made a gesture towards the Pieds-noirs by describing as “unforgivable for the Republic” the shooting in the rue d’Isly in Algiers in March 1962, in which dozens of supporters of French Algeria were killed by soldiers of the French army, and believing that the “massacre of July 5, 1962” in Oran should be “recognized”.
Last Tuesday, he paid tribute to the nine victims who died in the Charonne metro in Paris, during a demonstration for peace in Algeria on February 8, 1962, violently repressed by the French police under the authority of the prefect Maurice Papon.
The memorial work will continue with the commemoration of the Evian Accords on March 19, ie 20 days before the first round of the presidential election. The Elysée has indicated that it is preparing this anniversary carefully so that it “is not taken hostage” by politics.