France to declassify Algerian war archives
France will open up judicial archives on the Algerian war 15 years ahead of the stipulated declassification, the government announced on Friday, a move which could confirm the long-held allegations of torture by the French police and the gendarmerie against Algerian and French nationals, Anadolu Agency reports.
French law provides for declassification of government documents labelled “confidential,” “secret” or “very secret” after a period of 50 years.
Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot in an interview with BFMTV news broadcaster said she wants to open up access to the archives on the judicial investigations of the gendarmerie and the police in order for the French people to face the truth about the “disturbing questions” of the Algerian war.
"I want that on this question, which is disturbing, irritating, and where there are falsifiers of history at work ... I want us to be able to look it in the face" she said.
Questions pertaining to torture techniques employed by the French army and the police, leading to horrific killings and disappearances of thousands of civilians part of the resistance movement, have been a subject of taboo.
Bachelot said it was “in the country's interest to recognize it (torture).”
These include the cases of mathematician and Algerian Communist Party member Maurice Audin, who was tortured and executed by the French army, and the events of 1961 when Paris police drowned hundreds of protesting Algerians in the Seine river with their hands tied behind their backs, or strangulated or wounded with bullets.
Audin’s family has long campaigned for the opening of the archives. In 2018, President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged the torture and disappearance of Audin’s body and assured access to the archives. In October, he also condemned the Paris massacre and crimes by the French police as “inexcusable.”
The archives will also help establish the truth since “falsification of facts was leading to all the troubles and hatred,” the minister said, adding it will help in “rebuilding and reconciling” relations with Algeria.
France’s relations with Algeria are defined by the 132-year-long colonial occupation that ended with a brutal war of independence in 1962.
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