They challenge the schedule. In turn, Friday March 18, Valérie Pécresse and Marine Le Pen lamented that March 19 traditionally commemorates the end of the Algerian war. Emmanuel Macron must also hold a ceremony tomorrow at the Elysée on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the ceasefire.
Valérie Pécresse pledged to find another date, and promised if she was elected to hire “a form of reconciliation” memorial on the subject. “Obviously, March 19 does not mark the end of the Algerian conflict. 80% of civilian casualties fell after the Evian Accords”, she said during a trip to Nîmes. She recalled the shooting in the rue d’Isly, in Algiers, on March 26, 1962, in which dozens of supporters of French Algeria were killed by the army, or the Oran massacre of July 5, 1962.
Returnees dispute the reference to the Evian Accords – signed on March 18, 1962 and which led to the implementation of the ceasefire on March 19 – to commemorate the end of the Algerian war, because of the violence which continued until the independence of the country, on July 5, 1962, and ended with the exodus of hundreds of thousands of them to France.
evoking “the buried wounds that this anniversary revives every year”Mme Pécresse estimated that“we can no longer continue to oppose the memory of those who died for France during the fighting in Algeria and North Africa and the memory of those who fell or disappeared, in sometimes atrocious circumstances, after ceasefire”. And “These eight years of war were terrible” and “the unjust colonial system”she assured that “the French of Algeria and their children are not guilty of it”. “No, we must not, as Emmanuel Macron did, accuse them of a crime against humanity that they did not commit”she said.
“Reconcile by flagellation”
In the eyes of Marine Le Pen, “this date was not the end of the Algerian war, because there were tens of thousands of harkis who were brutally murdered”. “If it is a question of reconciling memories by flagellating itself in front of Algeria which continues to demand acts of repentance, as far as I am concerned, it will be no, unless Algeria itself asks for forgiveness from the harkis on how they behaved towards them”, added on France Inter the presidential candidate of the National Rally (RN), former National Front, which was for a long time the refuge of the partisans of French Algeria. Mayors of RN municipalities or close to the RN have renamed their streets “March 19, 1962”.
Emmanuel Macron placed the ceremony on Saturday under the sign of“appeasement” memories and ” hand held out “ to Algeria. “March 19 is a step on this path but it is not the end”insisted the presidency. “All the events related to the Algerian war did not end overnight with the signing of the Evian Accords”conceded the Elysée.
Parliament had, moreover, definitively adopted in February, by a final very broad vote of the Senate, a bill to request « pardon » to harkis, which paves the way for compensation for some families.