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#Post#: 330--------------------------------------------------
French Colonialism in Algiers
DIR By: guest5
Date: July 15, 2020, 6:03 pm
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The Battle of Algiers (Subtitled by Salem Zemali)
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_N2wyq7fCE
--- Quote ---
> The Battle of Algiers (Italian: La battaglia di Algeri;
Arabic: معركة
الجزائر‎,
romanized: Maʿrakat al-Jazāʾir) is a 1966
Italian-Algerian historical war film co-written and directed by
Gillo Pontecorvo and starring Jean Martin and Saadi Yacef. It is
based on events by rebels during the Algerian War (1954–1962)
against the French government in North Africa; the most
prominent being the titular Battle of Algiers, the capital of
Algeria. It was shot on location and the film's score was
composed by Ennio Morricone. The film was shot in a Roberto
Rossellini-inspired newsreel style: in black and white with
documentary-type editing to add to its sense of historical
authenticity, with mostly non-professional actors who had lived
through the real battle. It is often associated with Italian
neorealist cinema.[2]
>
> The film concentrates mainly on revolutionary fighter Ali La
Pointe during the years between 1954 and 1957, when guerrilla
fighters of the FLN regrouped and expanded into the Casbah, the
citadel of Algiers. Their actions were met by French
paratroopers attempting to regain territory. The highly dramatic
film is about the organization of a guerrilla movement and the
illegal methods, such as torture, used by the colonial power to
contain it. Algeria succeeded in gaining independence from the
French, which Pontecorvo addresses in the film's epilogue.[3]
>
> The film has been critically acclaimed. Both insurgent groups
and state authorities have considered it to be an important
commentary on urban guerrilla warfare. It occupies the 48th
place on the Critics' Top 250 Films of the 2012 Sight & Sound
poll,[4] as well as 120th place on Empire magazine's list of the
'500 greatest movies of all time'.[5] It was selected to enter
the list of the "100 Italian films to be saved".
>
> A subject of socio-political controversy, the film was not
screened for five years in France; it was released in 1971.[
--- End Quote ---
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Algiers
#Post#: 3761--------------------------------------------------
Re: Colonization of Africa
DIR By: guest5
Date: January 28, 2021, 1:16 pm
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French journalist says France should apologise to Algeria for
its crimes
--- Quote ---
> French journalist Jean-Michel Aphatie says France should
apologise to Algeria for its occupation, #colonialism​ and
war crimes.
--- End Quote ---
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj6wJ61MVE8
#Post#: 4837--------------------------------------------------
Re: French Colonialism in Algiers
DIR By: 90sRetroFan
Date: March 15, 2021, 2:04 am
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[img]
HTML https://incels.is/attachments/racisme-francais-2-massacres-et-exactions-criminelles-envers-des-civils-algeriens-jpg.1072983/[/img]
OLD CONTENT
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_conquest_of_Algeria#Fan_Affair
--- Quote ---
> In 1795–96, the French Republic contracted to purchase wheat
for the French army from two Jewish merchants in Algiers, and
Charles X was apparently uninterested in paying the Republic's
debt. The merchants, who had debts to Hussein Dey, the Ottoman
ruler of Algiers, claimed inability to pay those debts until
France paid its debts to them. The dey unsuccessfully negotiated
with Pierre Deval, the French consul, to rectify this situation,
and suspected Deval of collaborating with the merchants against
him, especially since the French government made no provision to
pay the merchants in 1820. Deval's nephew Alexandre, the consul
in Bône, further angered the dey by fortifying French
storehouses in Bône and La Calle despite prior agreements.[17]
>
> After a contentious meeting on 29 April 1827 in which Deval
refused to provide satisfactory answers, the dey struck Deval
with his fly-whisk (then called a fan). Charles X used this
slight against his diplomatic representative to first demand an
apology from the dey, and then to initiate a blockade against
the port of Algiers.
> ...
> Polignac opened negotiations with Muhammad Ali of Egypt to
essentially divide up North Africa. Ali, although nominally a
vassal of the Ottomans, eventually rejected this idea. As
popular opinion continued to rise against Polignac and the King,
they decided that a foreign policy victory such as the capture
of Algiers would turn opinion in their favour again.[19]
> ...
> While the French command had nominally agreed to preserve the
liberties, properties, and religious freedoms of the
inhabitants, French troops immediately began plundering the
city, arresting and killing people for arbitrary reasons,
seizing property, and desecrating religious sites. By
mid-August, the last remnants of Turkish authority were
summarily deported without opportunity to liquidate significant
assets.[22] One estimate indicates that more than fifty million
francs in assets were diverted into private hands during the
plunder.[23] This activity had a profound effect on future
relations between the French occupiers and the natives. A French
commission in 1833 wrote that "we have sent to their deaths on
simple suspicion and without trial people whose guilt was always
doubtful ... we massacred people carrying safe conducts ... we
have outdone in barbarity the barbarians".[22] One important
side effect of the expulsion of the Turks was that it created a
power vacuum in significant parts of the territory, from which
resistance to French occupation immediately began to arise.[24]
The methods used to establish French hegemony reached genocidal
proportions and war, famine and disease led to the death of
between 500,000 and 1 million of an estimated 3 million
Algerians.[25][26][27]
--- End Quote ---
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Algeria#Invasion_of_Algiers_(June_1830)
--- Quote ---
> Algerian refugees were welcomed by the Moroccan population,
while the Sultan recommended that the authorities of Tetuan
assist them, by providing jobs in the administration or the
military forces. The inhabitants of Tlemcen, close to the
Moroccan border, asked that they be placed under the Sultan's
authority in order to escape the invaders. Abderrahmane thus
named his nephew, Prince Moulay Ali, as Caliph of Tlemcen,
charged with the protection of the city. In retaliation France
executed two Moroccans: Mohamed Beliano and Benkirane as spies,
while their goods were seized by the military governor of Oran,
General Boyer.
>
> Soon after the conquest of Algiers, the soldier-politician
Bertrand Clauzel and others formed a company to acquire
agricultural land and, despite official discouragement, to
subsidize its settlement by European farmers, triggering a land
rush. Clauzel recognized the farming potential of the Mitidja
Plain and envisioned the large-scale production there of cotton.
As governor-general (1835–36), he used his office to make
private investments in land and encouraged army officers and
bureaucrats in his administration to do the same. This
development created a vested interest among government officials
in greater French involvement in Algeria. Commercial interests
with influence in the government also began to recognize the
prospects for profitable land speculation in expanding the
French zone of occupation.
> ...
> Among others testimonies, Lieutenant-colonel Lucien de
Montagnac wrote on 15 March 1843, in a letter to a friend:
>
> All populations who do not accept our conditions must be
despoiled. Everything must be seized, devastated, without age or
sex distinction: grass must not grow any more where the French
army has set foot. Who wants the end wants the means, whatever
may say our philanthropists. I personally warn all good soldiers
whom I have the honour to lead that if they happen to bring me a
living Arab, they will receive a beating with the flat of the
saber.... This is how, my dear friend, we must make war against
Arabs: kill all men over the age of fifteen, take all their
women and children, load them onto naval vessels, send them to
the Marquesas Islands or elsewhere. In one word, annihilate all
who will not crawl beneath our feet like dogs.[14]
> ...
> The most successful local opposition immediately after the
fall of Algiers was led by Ahmad ibn Muhammad, bey of
Constantine. He initiated a radical overhaul of the Ottoman
administration in his beylik by replacing Turkish officials with
local leaders, making Arabic the official language, and
attempting to reform finances according to the precepts of
Islam. After the French failed in several attempts to gain some
of the bey's territories through negotiation, an ill-fated
invasion force, led by Bertrand Clauzel, had to retreat from
Constantine in 1836 in humiliation and defeat. However, the
French captured Constantine under Sylvain Charles Valée the
following year, on 13 October 1837.
> ...
> From his capital in Tlemcen, Abd al Qadir set about building a
territorial Muslim state based on the communities of the
interior but drawing its strength from the tribes and religious
brotherhoods. By 1839, he controlled more than two-thirds of
Algeria. His government maintained an army and a bureaucracy,
collected taxes, supported education, undertook public works,
and established agricultural and manufacturing cooperatives to
stimulate economic activity.
>
> The French in Algiers viewed with concern the success of a
Muslim government and the rapid growth of a viable territorial
state that barred the extension of European settlement. Abd al
Qadir fought running battles across Algeria with French forces,
which included units of the Foreign Legion, organized in 1831
for Algerian service. Although his forces were defeated by the
French under General Thomas Bugeaud in 1836, Abd al Qadir
negotiated a favorable peace treaty the next year. The treaty of
Tafna gained conditional recognition for Abd al Qadir's regime
by defining the territory under its control and salvaged his
prestige among the tribes just as the shaykhs were about to
desert him. To provoke new hostilities, the French deliberately
broke the treaty in 1839 by occupying Constantine. Abd al Qadir
took up the holy war again, destroyed the French settlements on
the Mitidja Plain, and at one point advanced to the outskirts of
Algiers itself. He struck where the French were weakest and
retreated when they advanced against him in greater strength.
The government moved from camp to camp with the amir and his
army. Gradually, however, superior French resources and manpower
and the defection of tribal chieftains took their toll.
Reinforcements poured into Algeria after 1840 until Bugeaud had
at his disposal 108,000 men, one-third of the French army.
>
> One by one, the amir's strongholds fell to the French, and
many of his ablest commanders were killed or captured so that by
1843 the Muslim state had collapsed.
>
> Abd al Qadir took refuge in 1841 with his ally, the sultan of
Morocco, Abd ar Rahman II, and launched raids into Algeria. This
alliance led the French Navy to bombard and briefly occupy
Essaouira (Mogador) under the Prince de Joinville on August 16,
1844. A French force was destroyed at the Battle of Sidi-Brahim
in 1845. However, Abd al Qadir was obliged to surrender to the
commander of Oran Province, General Louis de Lamoricière, at the
end of 1847.
>
> Abd al Qadir was promised safe conduct to Egypt or Palestine
if his followers laid down their arms and kept the peace. He
accepted these conditions, but the minister of war — who years
earlier as general in Algeria had been badly defeated by Abd al
Qadir — had him consigned in France in the Château d'Amboise.
--- End Quote ---
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Laghouat
--- Quote ---
> The Siege of Laghouat was an episode of the French
Pacification of Algeria. General Aimable Pélissier commanding an
army of 6000, besieged the city of Laghouat in November 21,
1852. The decisive storming of the city occurred in December 4
and the French captured the city. The brutal treatment of the
inhabitants of the city was part of the scorched earth tactic of
the French army one of the first instances of recorded use of
chemical weapon on civilians.
>
> The storming of Laghouat[1][2][3][4] turned quickly into
several days of massacres[citation needed] to punish the
population that was treated as combating enemies. The battle
also witness the several deaths on the french side including
that of general Bouscaren, that added to the fervor of the
French soldiers to want to take revenge on the population
setting an example for other towns and cities throughout the
south of Algeria. About two thirds (2500 to 3000 out of a total
of 4500 inhabitants remaining in the besieged city) including
women and children were massacred[citation needed].
>
> The massacre has left a deep trauma in the Laghouati
population that endured until today.[4][3] The year of the
"Khalya" arabic for emptiness is commonly known to the
inhabitants of Laghouat as the year, when the city was emptied
of its population. It is also commonly known as the year of
Hessian sacks, referring to the way the captured surviving men
and boys were put alive in the hessian sacks and thrown into
digged up trenches. Many reports of the battle were written by
army chiefs and soldiers as well as visitors of the city after
the massacre that reported the morbid atmosphere of the city
following the siege.
>
> Surviving women were so afraid for their young sons of being
collected by the French forces, they came up with a ruse to hide
them. They dressed them as girls and put an earring on one ear.
The tradition of protecting young boys from evil with an earring
survived until today[citation needed].
>
> The level of brutality of the massacre of Laghouat was both a
show of force as well as part of the long scorched earth tactic
of the three French generals that took the fortified city. By
ordering the massacre of the population[citation needed], the
French were eyeing all the remaining Saharian territories beyond
Laghouat. During the battle of Laghouat several tribes and other
city republics and fortresses delivered help to try and stop the
advance of the French, namely Ghardaïa (and therefore the whole
of the Mozabite confederation), Metlili, and Ouargla. The nobles
of the latter cities after witnessing or hearing of the
atrocities committed in Laghouat, quickly sought a peaceful
agreement to surrender their cities or sign treaties keeping
their autonomy within the protection of France.
--- End Quote ---
#Post#: 4838--------------------------------------------------
Re: French Colonialism in Algiers
DIR By: 90sRetroFan
Date: March 15, 2021, 2:04 am
---------------------------------------------------------
OLD CONTENT contd.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lalla_Fatma_N%27Soumer
--- Quote ---
> Lalla Fadhma n'Soumer (Berber: Lalla Faḍma en Sumer,
ⵍⴰⵍⵍⴰ
ⴼⴰⴹⵎⴰ ⴻⵏ
ⵙⵓⵎⴻⵔ; c.1830 – c. 1863) was
an important figure of the Algerian resistance movement during
the first years of the French colonial invasion of Algeria. She
was seen as the embodiment of the struggle.
>
> From 1854 to July 1857, she assisted in leading a resistance
against the French. Once captured by French forces, she was
imprisoned until her death six years later. Her disciples would
believe that she was gifted powers by God, including the
abilities to see the future and cure illness.[1]
--- End Quote ---
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokrani_Revolt
--- Quote ---
> Cheikh Mokrani (Mohamed Amokrane) and his brother Boumezrag
were sons of a family of high rank - the Ait Abbas dynasty (a
branch of the Hafsids of Béjaïa), the Amokrane, masters, since
the sixteenth century of the Kalâa of Ait Abbas in the Bibans
and of the Medjana region.[5] In the 1830s, their father Ahmed
El Mokrani (d. 1853), had chosen to ally himself with the
French; it was he who had allowed the Iron Gates expedition in
1839 and he had become khalifa of the Medjana under the tutelage
of the French authorities.[6] This alliance had soon revealed
itself to be subordination - a decree of 1845 abolished the
khalifalik of Medjana so that when Mohamed succeeded his father,
as the choice of the Arab Bureaux, his title was no more than
“bachagha” (Turkish: başağa=chief commander).[7]:35
During the hardships of 1867, he gave his personal guarantee, at
the request of the authorities, for important loans. In 1870,
the creditors demanded to be repaid and the French authorities
reneged on the loan on the pretext of the Franco-Prussian War,
leaving Mohamed obliged to pawn his own possessions. The late
1860s were hard for the people of Algeria: between 1866 and 1868
they lived through drought, exceptionally cold winters, an
epidemic of cholera and an earthquake. More than 10% of the
kabyle population died during this period.[1] On 12 June 1869,
Marshall MacMahon, the Governor General, advised the French
government that “the Kabyles will stay peaceful as long as they
see no possibility of driving us out of their country.”[8]
> ...
> A number of origins have been suggested for the Mokrani
revolt. There was a general dissatisfaction among Kabyle
notables because of the steady erosion of their authority by the
colonial authorities. At the same time, ordinary people were
concerned about the imposition of civilian rule on 9 March,
which they interpreted as imposing domination by the settlers,
with encroachments on their land and loss of autonomy.[13] The
Cremieux Decree of 24 October 1870, which gave French
nationality to Algerian Jews was probably another cause of the
unrest.[7]
> ...
> On 16 March, Mokrani led six thousand men in an assault on
Bordj Bou Arreridj.[20] On 8 April, French troops regained
control of the Medjana plain. The same day, Si Aziz, son of
Cheikh Ahaddad, head of the Rahmaniyya order, proclaimed a holy
war in the market of Seddouk.[14] Soon 150,000 Kabyles rose,[21]
as the revolt spread along the coast first, then into the
mountains to the east of the Mitidja and as far as Constantine.
It then spread to the Belezma mountains and linked with local
insurrections all the way down to the Sahara desert.[22] As they
spread towards Algiers itself, the insurgents took Lakhdaria
(Palestro), 60 km east of the capital, on 14 April. By April,
250 tribes had risen, or nearly a third of Algeria's population.
One hundred thousand “mujahidin”, poorly armed and disorganised,
were launching random raids and attacks.[13]
> ...
> The military authorities brought in reinforcements for the
Army of Africa; Admiral de Gueydon, who took over as Governor
General on 29 March, replacing Special Commissioner Alexis
Lambert, mobilised 22,000 soldiers.[1] Advancing from Palestro
towards Algiers, the rebels were stopped at Boudouaou (Alma) on
22 April 1871; on 5 May,[1] Mohamed El Mokrani died fighting at
Oued Soufflat, halfway between Lakhdaria (Palestro) and Bouira
in an encounter with the troops of General Saussier.[20]
> ...
> On 25 April, the Governor General declared a state of
siege.[23] Twenty columns of French troops marched on Dellys and
Draâ El Mizan. Cheikh Haddad and his sons were captured on 13
July after the battle of Icheriden.[24] The revolt only faded
after the capture of Boumezrag, Cheikh Mokrani’s brother, on 20
January 1872.[25]
> ...
> During the fighting, around 100 European civilians died, along
with an unknown number of Algerian civilians.[1] After fighting
ceased, more than 200 Kabyles were interned[26] and others
deported to Cayenne[26] and New Caledonia, where they were known
as Algerians of the Pacific.[27] Boumezrag Mokrani was condemned
to death by a court in Constantine on 27 March 1873.
>
> The Kabylie region was subjected to a collective fine of 36
million francs, and 450,000 hectares of land were confiscated
and given to new settlers
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> A commission of inquiry set up by the French Senate in 1892
and headed by former Premier Jules Ferry, an advocate of
colonial expansion, recommended that the government abandon a
policy that assumed French law, without major modifications,
could fit the needs of an area inhabited by close to two million
Europeans and four million Muslims. Muslims had no
representation in the French National Assembly before 1945 and
were grossly under-represented on local councils. Because of the
many restrictions imposed by the authorities, by 1915 only
50,000 Muslims were eligible to vote in elections in the civil
communes. Attempts to implement even the most modest reforms
were blocked or delayed by the local administration in Algeria,
dominated by colons, and by the 27 colon representatives in the
National Assembly (six deputies and three senators from each
department).[citation needed]
>
> Once elected to the National Assembly, colons became permanent
fixtures. Because of their seniority, they exercised
disproportionate influence, and their support was important to
any government's survival.[citation needed] The leader of the
colon delegation, Auguste Warnier (1810–1875), succeeded during
the 1870s in modifying or introducing legislation to facilitate
the private transfer of land to settlers and continue the
Algerian state's appropriation of land from the local population
and distribution to settlers.
> ...
> Europeans held about 30% of the total arable land, including
the bulk of the most fertile land and most of the areas under
irrigation.[21] By 1900, Europeans produced more than two-thirds
of the value of output in agriculture and practically all
agricultural exports. The modern, or European, sector was run on
a commercial basis and meshed with the French market system that
it supplied with wine, citrus, olives, and vegetables. Nearly
half of the value of European-owned real property was in
vineyards by 1914. By contrast, subsistence cereal
production—supplemented by olive, fig, and date growing and
stock raising—formed the basis of the traditional sector, but
the land available for cropping was submarginal even for cereals
under prevailing traditional cultivation practices.
>
> The colonial regime imposed more and higher taxes on Muslims
than on Europeans.[22] The Muslims, in addition to paying
traditional taxes dating from before the French conquest, also
paid new taxes, from which the colons were normally exempted. In
1909, for instance, Muslims, who made up almost 90% of the
population but produced 20% of Algeria's income, paid 70% of
direct taxes and 45% of the total taxes collected. And colons
controlled how these revenues would be spent. As a result, colon
towns had handsome municipal buildings, paved streets lined with
trees, fountains and statues, while Algerian villages and rural
areas benefited little if at all from tax revenues.
>
> The colonial regime proved severely detrimental to overall
education for Algerian Muslims, who had previously relied on
religious schools to learn reading, writing, and engage in
religious studies. Not only did the state appropriate the habus
lands (the religious foundations that constituted the main
source of income for religious institutions, including schools)
in 1843, but colon officials refused to allocate enough money to
maintain schools and mosques properly and to provide for enough
teachers and religious leaders for the growing population. In
1892, more than five times as much was spent for the education
of Europeans as for Muslims, who had five times as many children
of school age.
> ...
> Efforts were begun by 1890 to educate a small number of
Muslims along with European students in the French school system
as part of France's "civilizing mission" in Algeria. The
curriculum was entirely French and allowed no place for Arabic
studies, which were deliberately downgraded even in Muslim
schools. Within a generation, a class of well-educated,
gallicized Muslims — the évolués (literally, the evolved
ones)—had been created.
> ...
> Reporting to the French Senate in 1894, Governor General Jules
Cambon wrote that Algeria had "only a dust of people left her."
He referred to the destruction of the traditional ruling class
that had left Muslims without leaders
> ...
> Algeria became the prototype for a pattern of French colonial
rule which has been described as "quasi-apartheid".[26]
>
> When French rule began, France had no well established systems
for intensive colonial governance, the main existing legal
provision being the 1685 Code Noir, which focused on
slave-trading and owning. From 1830, Algerians were not French
citizens, nor did they have a mechanism to become citizens.As
French rule in Algeria expanded, particularly under
Thomas-Robert Bugeaud (1841–48), discriminatory governance
became increasingly formalised. In 1844, Bugeaud formalised a
system of European settlements along the coast, under civil
government, with Arab/Berber areas in the interior under
military governance.[27] An important feature of French rule
was cantonnement, whereby tribal land that was supposedly unused
was seized by the state, which enabled French colonists to
expand their landholdings, pushing indigenous people onto more
marginal land and making them more vulnerable to drought;[28]
this was extended under the governance of Bugeaud's successor,
Jacques Louis Randon.[27]
> ...
> In 1870, the French government granted Algerian Jews French
citizenship under the Crémieux Decree, but not Muslims.[31] This
meant that most Algerians were now 'French subjects', treated as
the objects of French law, but were not citizens, could not
vote, and were effectively without the right to citizenship.[30]
(Jewish people's citizenship was revoked by the Vichy government
in the early 1940s, but was restored in 1943.)
>
> In 1881, the Code de l'indigénat was formally introduced,
enabling district officials to issue summary punishments to
Muslims without due legal process, and to extract special taxes
and forced labour.
> ...
> In a bargain-hunting frenzy to take over or buy at low prices
all manner of property—homes, shops, farms and
factories—Europeans poured into Algiers after it fell. French
authorities took possession of the beylik lands, from which
Ottoman officials had derived income. Over time, as pressures
increased to obtain more land for settlement by Europeans, the
state seized more categories of land, particularly that used by
tribes, religious foundations, and villages
--- End Quote ---
#Post#: 4839--------------------------------------------------
Re: French Colonialism in Algiers
DIR By: 90sRetroFan
Date: March 15, 2021, 2:05 am
---------------------------------------------------------
OLD CONTENT contd.
The only bright spot in French administration:
--- Quote ---
> Napoleon III visited Algeria twice in the early 1860s. He was
profoundly impressed with the nobility and virtue of the tribal
chieftains, who appealed to the emperor's romantic nature, and
was shocked by the self-serving attitude of the colon leaders.
He decided to halt the expansion of European settlement beyond
the coastal zone and to restrict contact between Muslims and the
colons, whom he considered to have a corrupting influence on the
indigenous population. He envisioned a grand design for
preserving most of Algeria for the Muslims by founding a royaume
arabe (Arab kingdom) with himself as the roi des Arabes (king of
the Arabs). He instituted the so-called politics of the grands
chefs to deal with the Muslims directly through their
traditional leaders.[39]
>
> To further his plans for the royaume arabe, Napoleon III
issued two decrees affecting tribal structure, land tenure, and
the legal status of Muslims in French Algeria. The first,
promulgated in 1863, was intended to renounce the state's claims
to tribal lands and eventually provide private plots to
individuals in the tribes, thus dismantling "feudal" structures
and protecting the lands from the colons. Tribal areas were to
be identified, delimited into douars (administrative units), and
given over to councils. Arable land was to be divided among
members of the douar over a period of one to three generations,
after which it could be bought and sold by the individual
owners. Unfortunately for the tribes, however, the plans of
Napoleon III quickly unraveled.
--- End Quote ---
It took WWII to inspire successful Algerian nationalism (though
sadly it was based on democracy):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algerian_War
--- Quote ---
> nationalist leader Ferhat Abbas founded the Algerian Popular
Union (Union populaire algérienne) in 1938. In 1943 Abbas wrote
the Algerian People's Manifesto (Manifeste du peuple algérien).
Arrested after the Sétif massacre of May 8, 1945, during which
the French Army and pieds-noirs mobs killed about 6,000
Algerians,[13]:27 Abbas founded the Democratic Union of the
Algerian Manifesto (UDMA) in 1946 and was elected as a deputy.
Founded in 1954, the National Liberation Front (FLN) succeeded
Messali Hadj's Algerian People's Party (PPA), while its leaders
created an armed wing, the Armée de Libération Nationale
(National Liberation Army) to engage in an armed struggle
against French authority. France, which had just lost Indochina,
was determined not to lose the next anti-colonial war,
particularly not in its oldest and nearest major colony, which
was regarded as an integral part of the republic.
> ...
> Fewer than 500 fellaghas (pro-Independence fighters) could be
counted at the beginning of the conflict.[41] The Algerian
population radicalized itself in particular because of the
terrorist acts of French-sponsored Main Rouge (Red Hand) group,
which targeted anti-colonialists in all of the Maghreb region
(Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria), killing, for example, Tunisian
activist Farhat Hached in 1952.[41]
> ...
> As the FLN campaign of influence spread through the
countryside, many European farmers in the interior (called
Pieds-Noirs), many of whom lived on lands taken from Muslim
communities during the nineteenth century,[43] sold their
holdings and sought refuge in Algiers and other Algerian cities.
After a series of bloody, random massacres and bombings by
Muslim Algerians in several towns and cities, the French
Pieds-Noirs and urban French population began to demand that the
French government engage in sterner countermeasures, including
the proclamation of a state of emergency, capital punishment for
political crimes, denunciation of all separatists, and most
ominously, a call for 'tit-for-tat' reprisal operations by
police, military, and para-military forces. Colon vigilante
units, whose unauthorized activities were conducted with the
passive cooperation of police authorities, carried out
ratonnades (literally, rat-hunts, raton being a racist term for
denigrating Muslim Algerians) against suspected FLN members of
the Muslim community.
> ...
> The FLN adopted tactics similar to those of nationalist groups
in Asia, and the French did not realize the seriousness of the
challenge they faced until 1955, when the FLN moved into
urbanized areas. "An important watershed in the War of
Independence was the massacre of Pieds-Noirs civilians by the
FLN near the town of Philippeville (now known as Skikda) in
August 1955. Before this operation, FLN policy was to attack
only military and government-related targets. The commander of
the Constantine wilaya/region, however, decided a drastic
escalation was needed. The killing by the FLN and its supporters
of 123 people, including 71 French,[44] including old women and
babies, shocked Jacques Soustelle into calling for more
repressive measures against the rebels. The French authorities
stated that 1,273 guerrillas died in what Soustelle admitted
were "severe" reprisals. The FLN subsequently claimed that
12,000 Muslims were killed.[13]:122 Soustelle's repression was
an early cause of the Algerian population's rallying to the
FLN.[44] After Philippeville, Soustelle declared sterner
measures and an all-out war began
--- End Quote ---
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Algiers_(1956–57)
--- Quote ---
> On the FLN side, a decision was made in late 1956 to embark
upon a sustained campaign of urban terrorism designed to show
the authority of the French state did not extend to Algiers,
Algeria's largest city.[12] Abane Ramdane believed that such a
campaign would be the "Algerian Dien Bien Phu" that would force
the French out of Algeria.[12] It was decided to deliberately
target pied-noir citizens as a way of breaking French power as
one FLN directive put it: "A bomb causing the death of ten
people and wounding fifty others is the equivalent on the
psychological level to the loss of a French battalion."[13]
>
> On 28 December 1956, on the orders of Ben M'hidi, Ali La
Pointe assassinated the Mayor of Boufarik and President of the
Federation of Mayors of Algeria, Amedee Froger outside his house
on Rue Michelet. The following day, a bomb exploded in the
cemetery where Froger was to be buried; enraged European
civilians responded by carrying out random revenge attacks
(ratonnade), killing four Muslims and injuring 50.[14]
> ...
> There were no written orders from the government of Guy Mollet
to use torture or engage in extrajudicial executions, but
numerous Army officers have stated that they received verbal
permission to use whatever means necessary to break the FLN
including the use of torture and extrajudicial killings.
> ...
> On the afternoon of Saturday 26 January, female FLN operatives
again planted bombs in European Algiers, the targets were the
Otomatic on Rue Michelet, the Cafeteria and the Coq-Hardi
brasserie. The explosions killed 4 and wounded 50 and a Muslim
was killed by Pied-Noirs in retaliation.[17]
>
> In late January the FLN called an 8-day general strike across
Algeria commencing on Monday 28 January. The strike appeared to
be a success with most Muslim shops remaining shuttered, workers
failed to turn up and children didn't attend school. However
Massu soon deployed his troops and used armored cars to pull the
steel shutters off shops while army trucks rounded up workers
and schoolchildren and forced them to attend their jobs and
studies. Within a few days the strike had been broken.[18] The
bombings however continued and in mid-February female FLN
operatives planted bombs at the Municipal Stadium and the
El-Biar Stadium in Algiers killing 10 and injuring 45.[17] After
visiting Algiers, a clearly shocked defense minister Maurice
Bourgès-Maunoury told General Massu after the bombings: "We must
finish these people off!".[19]
> ...
> the use of torture by the French security forces became
institutionalised, the techniques ranging from beatings,
electroshock (the gegene), Waterboarding, sexual assault and
rape.[24]
> ...
> On 23 March following a meeting between Massu, Trinquier,
Fossy-Francois and Aussaresses to discuss what was to be done
with Ali Boumendjel, Aussaresses went to the prison where
Boumendjel was being held and ordered that he be transferred to
another building, in the process he was thrown from a 6th floor
skybridge to his death.[34]
>
> Major Aussaresses was unapologetic regarding the actions he
had undertaken during the battle, he said that "The justice
system would have been paralyzed had it not been for our
initiative. Many terrorists would have been freed and given the
opportunity of launching other attacks..The judicial system was
not suited for such drastic conditions... Summary executions
were therefore an inseparable part of the tasks associated with
keeping law and order."[35]
> ...
> In early May two paratroopers were shot in the street by the
FLN, their comrades led by one of Trinquier's informers attacked
a bath-house which was believed to be an FLN hideout, killing
almost 80 Muslims.[37]
>
> On 3 June Yacef's forces planted bombs in street lamps at bus
stops in the centre of Algiers, the explosions killed eight and
wounded 90, a mix of French and Muslims. On 9 June a bomb
exploded at the Casino on the outskirts of Algiers killing nine
and injuring 85. Following the burial of the dead from the
casino, the Pied-Noirs started a ratonnade that resulted in five
Muslims dead and more than 50 injured.
> ...
> FLN losses are impossible to determine accurately. In addition
to the publicised FLN deaths there were many who simply
disappeared. Paul Teitgen, general secretary of the Prefecture
of Algiers who resigned in March 1957 (but was kept in his post
by Governor-General Lacoste until October 1957) over the use of
torture by French forces calculated that over 24,000 Muslims had
been arrested during the battle and by subtracting those
released or still in captivity estimated that as many as 3,000
were missing.[43]
>
> As details of the use of torture and summary executions became
public in the years following the battle and the end of the
Algerian War, the French victory and the reputations of many of
the commanders became tainted by the methods used in the
battle.[44]
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> revelations of torture and the indiscriminate brutality the
army visited on the Muslim population prompted widespread
revulsion, and a significant constituency supported the
principle of national liberation. By 1959, it was clear that the
status quo was untenable and France could either grant Algeria
independence or allow real equality with the Muslims. De Gaulle
told an advisor: "If we integrate them, if all the Arabs and the
Berbers of Algeria were considered French, how could they be
prevented from settling in France, where the living standard is
so much higher? My village would no longer be called
Colombey-les-Deux-Églises but Colombey-les-Deux-Mosquées".
> ...
> De Gaulle convoked the first referendum on the
self-determination of Algeria on January 8, 1961, which 75% of
the voters (both in France and Algeria) approved and de Gaulle's
government began secret peace negotiations with the FLN.
> ...
> The OAS was to be the main standard bearer for the pieds-noirs
for the rest of the war.
> ...
> To pressure de Gaulle to abandon his demand to keep the
Sahara, the FLN organized demonstrations in France from
Algerians living there in the fall of 1961, which the French
police crushed.[65]:91 It was in the course of crushing one
demonstration that a massacre of Algerians on 17 October 1961,
which was ordered by Maurice Papon. On 10 January 1962, the FLN
started a "general offensive" against the OAS, staging a series
on the pied-noir communities as a way of applying
pressure.[65]:91 On 7 February 1962, the OAS attempted to
assassinate the Culture Minister André Malraux by setting off a
bomb in his apartment building that failed to kill its intended
target, but did leave a four-year girl living in the adjoining
apartment blinded by the shrapnel.[66] The blinding of the girl
did much to turn French opinion against the OAS.
>
> On 20 February 1962 a peace accord was reached for granting
independence to all of Algeria.[65]:87 In their final form, the
Évian Accords allowed the pieds-noirs equal legal protection
with Algerians over a three-year period. These rights included
respect for property, participation in public affairs, and a
full range of civil and cultural rights. At the end of that
period, however, all Algerian residents would be obliged to
become Algerian citizens or be classified as aliens with the
attendant loss of rights. The agreement also allowed France to
establish military bases in Algeria even after independence
(including the nuclear test site of Regghane, the naval base of
Mers-el-Kebir and the air base of Bou Sfer) and to have
privileges vis-à-vis Algerian oil. The OAS started a campaign of
spectacular terrorist attacks to sabotage the Évian Accords,
hoping that if enough Muslims were killed, a general pogrom
against the pieds-noirs would break out, leading the French Army
to turn its guns against the government.[65]:87 Despite ample
provocation with OAS lobbying mortar shells into the casbah of
Algiers, the FLN gave orders for no retaliatory attacks.[65]:87
In the spring of 1962, the OAS turned to bank robbery to finance
its war against both the FLN and the French state, and bombed
special units sent by Paris to hunt them down.[65]:93 Only
eighty deputies voted against the Évian Accords in the National
Assembly and Cairns wrote the "fulminations" of Jean-Marie Le
Pen against de Gaulle were only "...the traditional verbal
excesses of third-rate firebrands without a substantial
following and without a constructive idea".[65]
> ...
> De Gaulle pronounced Algeria an independent country on July 3.
The Provisional Executive, however, proclaimed July 5, the 132nd
anniversary of the French entry into Algeria, as the day of
national independence.
>
> During the three months between the cease-fire and the French
referendum on Algeria, the OAS unleashed a new campaign. The OAS
sought to provoke a major breach in the ceasefire by the FLN,
but the attacks now were aimed also against the French army and
police enforcing the accords as well as against Muslims. It was
the most wanton carnage that Algeria had witnessed in eight
years of savage warfare. OAS operatives set off an average of
120 bombs per day in March, with targets including hospitals and
schools.
>
> During the summer of 1962, a rush of pieds-noirs fled to
France. Within a year, 1.4 million refugees, including almost
the entire Jewish community, had joined the exodus. Despite the
declaration of independence on July 5, 1962, the last French
forces did not leave the naval base of Mers El Kébir until 1967.
> ...
> After having denied its use for 40 years, the French state has
finally recognized its history of torture; although, there was
never an official proclamation about it. General Paul
Aussaresses was sentenced following his justification of the use
of torture for "apology of war crimes." But, as it did during
wartime, the French state claimed torture were isolated acts,
instead of admitting its responsibility for the frequent use of
torture to break the insurgents' morale and not, as Aussaresses
has claimed, to "save lives" by gaining short-term information
which would stop "terrorists".[101] The state now claims that
torture was a regrettable aberration due to the context of the
exceptionally savage war. But academic research has proven both
theses false. "Torture in Algeria was engraved in the colonial
act; it is a 'normal' illustration of an abnormal system", wrote
Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard and Sandrine Lemaire, who
discuss the phenomena of "human zoos."[102]
--- End Quote ---
NEVER FORGIVE. NEVER FORGET.
#Post#: 4972--------------------------------------------------
Re: French Colonialism in Algiers
DIR By: Dazhbog
Date: March 19, 2021, 7:48 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
--- Quote from: 90sRetroFan link ---
> De Gaulle told an advisor: "If we integrate them, if all the
Arabs and the Berbers of Algeria were considered French, how
could they be prevented from settling in France, where the
living standard is so much higher? My village would no longer be
called Colombey-les-Deux-Églises but
Colombey-les-Deux-Mosquées".
--- End Quote ---
Guess which side De Gaulle was on during WW2?
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_de_Gaulle
--- Quote ---
> Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle [...] was a French army
officer and statesman who led Free France against Nazi Germany
in World War II
--- End Quote ---
On a side note, I think Colombey-les-Deux-Églises shouldn't even
be called Colombey-les-Deux-Mosquées in the future, though this
would of course be an improvement over the status quo. It should
get an altogether Arab/Berber name.
#Post#: 6276--------------------------------------------------
Re: French Colonialism in Algiers
DIR By: guest5
Date: May 10, 2021, 11:40 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Algeria's first National Remembrance Day for the Setif Massacre
--- Quote ---
> Algeria commemorates its first National Remembrance Day in
memory of the Setif Massacre of 1945 when French troops killed
45,000 Algerians.
> #8mai1945​ #Setif​ #Algeria​
--- End Quote ---
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VuJByIINN4
#Post#: 7865--------------------------------------------------
Re: French Colonialism in Algiers
DIR By: 90sRetroFan
Date: August 2, 2021, 11:06 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Related:
HTML http://aryanism.net/blog/aryan-sanctuary/anti-zionist-harvest-au-edition/
#Post#: 9134--------------------------------------------------
Re: French Colonialism in Algiers
DIR By: guest55
Date: September 30, 2021, 12:21 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
French president apologises to betrayed Algerian Harkis
--- Quote ---
> French President Emmanuel Macron was heckled as he asked for
‘forgiveness’ from Algerian Harkis who were betrayed and
abandoned by France. #France #Betrayal #Massacre
--- End Quote ---
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHiM694C-LI
Does anyone believe his apology was sincere?
#Post#: 9449--------------------------------------------------
Re: French Colonialism in Algiers
DIR By: 90sRetroFan
Date: October 17, 2021, 9:53 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VRqYvtF1kM
--- Quote ---
> French president Emmanuel Macron has condemned as
'inexcusable' the brutal repression of Algerian protesters by
Paris police 60 years ago. On October 17, 1961, officers carried
out a deadly crackdown on a demonstration by tens of thousands
of Algerians, in one of the darkest episodes in post war France.
Some historians say more than 200 people were killed in the
violence.
>
> It's the first time a French president has attended a memorial
ceremony for the Algerians killed on that night. Emmanuel Macron
joined relatives of the victims in paying tribute. 60 years ago
at this spot, bodies were fished out from the Seine river.
>
> An estimated 25 thousand Algerians rallied peacefully in
protest against a curfew imposed on them alone. Police responded
without mercy, arresting nearly 12,000 and killing dozens,
throwing their bodies into the river. Many others were taken
away to sorting centers and then deported.
--- End Quote ---
OK, so will you accept 10000 refugees from Algeria for each
victim of the 1961 police crackdown?
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