The bill, which must be definitively adopted on Tuesday, paves the way for compensation for certain families.
Sixty years after the end of the Algerian war, the Parliament is preparing to definitively adopt Tuesday, February 15, 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, asked “sorry” to those Algerians who fought alongside the French army, but who were “abandoned” by France after the signing of the Evian Accords on March 18, 1962.
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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 final 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 “conditions unworthy of reception” reserved for the 90,000 harkis and their families, who fled Algeria after independence. Almost half of them have been relegated to camps and “forest hamlets”. “These places were places of banishment, which bruised, traumatized and sometimes killed”according to the minister.
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A level of compensation deemed “low”
For these, the bill provides “repair” 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 deemed “weak”even “ridiculous” by some, the disappointments have crystallized on the approximately 40,000 returnees excluded from reparation because they have stayed in “urban cities”where they were not deprived of freedom of movement, even if they experienced precarious living conditions.
Up to 200,000 harkis had been recruited as auxiliaries of the French army during the conflict between 1954 and 1962. A day of tribute from the Nation has been dedicated to them every September 25, since a decree of 2003. Symbolically, this date will be inscribed 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 may also propose changes to the systems to the government.
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“Complex story”, “composite memory” : Emmanuel Macron has committed to a series of strong actions to “appease” the memories of the Algerian war which continues to divide the French. In a speech at the Élysée at the end of January, the Head of State made a gesture towards the Pieds-noirs by calling them“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 considering that the “Massacre of July 5, 1962” in Oran was to 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 Élysée has indicated that it is carefully preparing this anniversary so that it “don’t be taken hostage” by politics.