LPresident Emmanuel Macron called for the “strengthening of the already strong ties” between France and Algeria in a letter addressed to his counterpart Abdelmadjid Tebboune on the occasion of the 60e anniversary of the independence of Algeria. A wreath will also be laid in his name on Tuesday at the National Memorial of the War in Algeria and the Combat of Morocco and Tunisia, Quai Branly, in Paris, in tribute to the victims of the massacre of Europeans in Oran, the same day of independence, July 5, 1962, announced Monday evening the Elysée.
“The 60th anniversary of Algeria’s independence, on July 5, 2022, is an opportunity for the President of the Republic to send a letter to President Tebboune his wishes to the Algerian people and to express his wishes that the already strong ties between France and Algeria continue to be strengthened”, indicated the French presidency. “He reiterates, moreover, his commitment to continue his process of recognition of the truth and reconciliation of the memories of the Algerian and French peoples”, continues the Elysée.
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A symbolic sixtieth anniversary
On July 5, 1962, Algeria declared its independence, after 132 years of French colonization and a bloody war of liberation lasting nearly eight years. Sixty years later, the wounds are still alive on both sides despite symbolic gestures over the years of France. In September 2018, a year after his election, Emmanuel Macron recognizes that the young communist mathematician Maurice Audin died under torture by the French army in 1957 and asks “forgiveness” from his widow. After the publication of the report by the French historian Benjamin Stora, in January 2021, he commits to “symbolic acts” to try to reconcile the two countries, but excludes “repentance and apologies”, which is coldly welcomed in Algiers .
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In the same concern for reconciliation of memories, on January 26, 2022 he expressed France’s “gratitude” towards the returnees from Algeria and urged them to “recognize” and “look in the face” the “massacre of July 5, 1962” in Oran. , which affected “hundreds of Europeans, mainly French”. “He then denounced the deadly spiral of civil war and reaffirmed his attachment to memory not obscuring any part of history and to its transmission,” recalled the Élysée. The bilateral relationship soured in October 2021 when Emmanuel Macron claimed that Algeria had been built after its independence on “a memorial rent”, maintained by “the politico-military system”, arousing the ire of Alger. But relations have gradually warmed up in recent months and the French president and his Algerian counterpart expressed their desire to “deepen” them during a telephone interview on June 18.