France massacre in Algeria
153,000 dead, 160,000 wounded, 1,500,000 dead according to the Algerian government and all this made by France goverment, one of the biggest massacre all over the World and further even 960,000 dead according to historians and Sarkozy-led French government is yet to agree to a demand made by Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 2006 to apologize for French-organized massacres, amounting to genocide, during its century-long colonial rule in Algeria, according to Abdenour Boukhemkhem, Secretary General of National Federation of Algerian Journalists and a senior journalist at the prominent Algerian Echorouk daily.
Algeria became a French colony in 1830 and later fought a war of independence from 1954-1962 against France, leaving 1.5 million Algerians dead out of a population of 9 million. However, a 1962 agreement with France that gave Algeria its independence prevented both Algeria and France from seeking future compensation for deaths and other losses. Boukhemkhem explained French activities in Algeria in detail and said that Algerian independence was not the end of French violence.
“France first acquired nuclear weapons in 1960. Many of these weapons were tested on Algerian soil, causing more than 100,000 deaths in Algeria. Diseases coming out of these nuclear tests still occur in Algeria, like cancer, physical deformation and so on,” he stated. In addition, French military forces planted land mines and electrical cables in an area from western Algeria to the Tunisian border during the Algeria struggle, in order to block external help to Algeria, he claimed, which continues to kill many Algerians in the area.
Bouteflika, the Algerian president since 1999, also demanded, in addition to monetary compensation, another apology from the Sarkozy government in 2006 for France’s bloody activities in Algeria and was widely supported by Algerian civil society organizations and human rights activists. Citing this fact in his exclusive interview with Today’s Zaman, Boukhemkhem stated that the Sarkozy administration, which is trying to enact a bill criminalizing the denial of the “Armenian genocide,” did not apologize in any way. He claimed that the French left and right, who disagree on almost every political issue, were in consensus on denying the Algerian massacres. He explained the reasons behind this, saying that “Sarkozy has an important amount of voters from the far right and he does not want to lose them by causing arguments on the French massacre. Other than that, he does not want to pay the financial costs of such an admission,” emphasizing that the French government “did not fulfill an important humanitarian responsibility to the Algerian people.”
The French parliament is preparing to debate a bill penalizing the denial of claims that Armenians were subject to genocide at the hands of the late Ottoman Empire during World War I. Turkey, which denies the genocide charges, has angrily protested the French plans and told France to look at its bloody colonial past instead.
Boukhemkhem claimed that the initiative for the bill on Armenian genocide denial does not stem from human rights concerns, deeming it a mere political decision. “Sarkozy has wanted to block Turkey’s EU integration since the beginning of his term, and he was doing that by accusing Turkey of insufficient democratization. Facing the fact that the current Turkish government fulfilled many EU recommendations on democracy, France began to seek alternatives to discussion of Turkey’s democratic deficiencies, to block Turkish integration,” he said, depicting this bill as an example.
Additionally, he claimed that France is disturbed by Turkey’s successful economic and political activities on the African continent, noting that as another cause behind the bill. He praised the Turkish businesses starting to take their hold in many African countries, including Algeria, where French companies dominate the economy. Turkish investments in Algeria, amounting to $1 billion annually, are made predominantly in the fields in construction, agricultural production, industry and education and employ nearly 20,000 Algerians.
