On the occasion of May 8, 1945, the academic Olivier Le Court Grandmaison imagined a fictional speech where the President La République recognizes colonial crimes in Algeria

On May 8, 1945 marked in France the celebration of victory over Nazism. But on the other side of the Mediterranean, in colonized Algeria, this date is also synonymous with massacres of appalling magnitude, perpetrated by the French army and the colonial militias in Sétif, Guelma and Kherrata. This May 8, thousands of Algerians were killed in a bloody repression that remained in the shadow of national memory for a long time. On the occasion of this highly symbolic date, L‘Historian and politician Olivier Le Court Grandmaison publishes in his blog on Mediapart a fictional speech, but powerfully documented and carrying a deep historical and moral commitment. He imagines a presidential speech where the head of the State would officially recognize the colonial crimes committed in Algeria-and beyond-in the name of the Republic.

“I have a dream”, France recognizes the colonial crimes it has committed

May 8, 202…

Presidency of the French Republic

Speech by the President of the Republic for the commemorations of May 8, 1945

“My dear compatriots, on the occasion of the commemorations of May 8, 1945 intended, following the heroic fights of the Allied forces, of the French and the French committed, at the risk of their life and their freedom, against the Vichy regime, and committed, of course also, against Nazi barbarism, these commemorations, I said, are intended, each knowing, to celebrate the end of the Second World War and Peace in Europe. Certainly, but other events must also hold our attention. Not to replace, however little as it is in the first, but to uncover truths for too long hidden first, euphemized then when they have long been established by numerous historians and specialists in colonial Algeria. The same ones who, thanks to their obstinacy and despite the difficulties encountered in accessing certain archives, I will come back, have reconstructed the precise chronology of the massacres perpetrated from May 8, 1945 in Sétif, Guelma and Kherrata, in particular, by the armed forces and the colonial militias, exhumed the responsibilities of the Governor General of Algeria, Yves Chataigneau, those of the provisional government French and his leader, General de Gaulle. In doing so, they also established the appalling assessment of Algerian victims which amounts to 30,000 or perhaps even 35,000 victims.

To those who take the argument of these inaccuracies to reduce the extent of what happened or to argue that our knowledge remains too incomplete, it must be remembered that it is the characteristic of state crimes to create a situation where the precise identification and census of the victims remain impossible. Calcinated body, buried in common pits kept secret, or even thrown from the top of the cliffs without omitting the volunteer “losses” registration of deaths in the civil status; These are some of the means mobilized to erase the traces of crime as much as possible in the days and weeks following its committee. Hence this situation, so terribly painful for the descendants who, in some cases, have never been able to grant their loved ones. And for those who intend to work for knowledge and truth, significant difficulties. No matter the differences in the figures mentioned at the moment; They do not change the nature of the acts committed. At a minimumthey are state crimes since it is the French public authorities that carry the ultimate responsibility for the methods used to restore, whatever it costs the “natives” as they said, the colonial order. A maximumthey must be described as crimes against humanity, in accordance with the definition given to it in article 212-1 of our penal code since the Algerians have been tortured, summarized summarily and victims of forced disappearances for political, ethnic and religious reasons, and this “virtue of a concerted plan. Various personalities, lawyers, lawyers and political scientists said it for a long time; It must be admitted today that their only wrong is to be right too early.

On July 16, 1995, through the strong and courageous voice of President Jacques Chirac, our country honored by recognizing France’s responsibility in the arrest and deportation of many French and foreign Jews doomed to extermination in the death camps erected by the Nazi totalitarian regime. On May 8, 202…, although the acts perpetrated in Algeria are of another nature, it is time to recognize that the French State and its armed forces have committed the aforementioned crime. At the address of all those who, yesterday, suffered in their flesh because of the colonial, discriminatory and racist order which was imposed on them by the metropolis, and its terrible military and repressive methods, their descendants who live today in many independent countries, and in France, we say with solemnity, gravity and sadness: “Yes, from Algiers to Brazzaville without forgetting Saigon, Tananarivo, Yaoundé and Noumea, especiallycolonization was a crime against your humanity and a crime against humanity. »»

By becoming imperial and participating in the “race for Africa”, in the aftermath of the Berlin conference in 1885, the Republic continued to violate its principles. The multiple armed operations carried out against free peoples and independent states testify, sinisterly. They were however prohibited by article V of the preamble to the Constitution of the Second Republic (November 4, 1848) which is thus written: the French Republic “respects foreign nationalities (…), it does not undertake No war in views of conquest,, and never uses its forces against the freedom of any people. Admirable article which makes it possible to exhume precious conceptions but too often forgotten not to say hidden. If there was, alas, never applied, this article obliges us for the present as for the future. Better still, in a few words, he says remarkably what should have been while allowing us to judge the acts committed by the third, the fourth and the fifth republic.

Regarding the colonized, they have constantly flouted the principles of the famous republican triptych: “Freedom, Equality, Fraternity”. Individual and collective freedoms were reduced to nothing, equality waged at the foot by the State and the colonial law which rested on hierarchical representations of the human race. And consequently, the latter substituted for fraternity, contempt and racist hatred with their procession of daily discrimination and humiliations, insults and incessant symbolic violence. Thus apprehended and stigmatized, the other was no longer a brother, a similar, an equal in law and dignity but an “native” deemed lower, violent and dangerous for the stability of the colonial order and the security of goods and people. From there, these bloody repression, these killings and, sometimes, these total wars carried out against those who fought for freedom and the right of peoples to dispose of themselves. Let us not forget the massacred civilian populations and the terrible destruction of oases, villages and various agglomerations destroyed by the infernal columns of Bugeaud, by the army in 1945 then after 1^er November 1954. From there, finally, this overwhelming assessment: nearly a million dead in French possessions between May 8, 1945 and the end of the last war in Algeria, March 19, 1962. On the one hand, peace restored, celebrated and preserved in Europe; on the other, incessant and particularly deadly conflicts, and bloody repression. These are the truths that we must today admit and proclaim, and that we will have to repeat in the coming years so that no one forgets. Praised by many, the duty of memory is only a vain requirement without this prior and major duty: that of recognition.

Ladies and gentlemen, recognizing what has been perpetrated, it is not only paying homage to the victims, it is also to pay them symbolic justice because that of men, courts, the judgment of the culprits and their condemnation are obviously no longer possible since the latter died. Let us add, it is also essential, that IGI in this way it is also recognizing the family, personal and intimate sufferings of their heir by signifying them solemnly and publicly that they are equals and that their singular and so often painful history will now have the right of city. It will have the right of city because it will be present in textbooks, taught and inscribed in public space thanks to commemorative plates, steles and monuments. For these purposes, a museum of colonization will also be built so that everyone, at all ages, can learn, read, document themselves and remember what was committed in the name of France and the Republic in the territories of the Empire. In addition, in the coming days, I will ask, the government to develop, with the competent services, a bill in order to make access to the archives as free as possible so that researchers, of course, but also for citizens and all those who wish to consult them.

Twenty-four years after the famous Durban conference and its consequences, we will be faithful to the recommendations made a few years later. They recall “that slavery and slave trade, in particular transatlantic trafficking, apartheid, colonialism and genocide should never be forgotten. In addition, the participants then welcomed “measures taken to honor the memory of the victims” and praised the “countries which (…) expressed remorse, presented their apologies, created institutional mechanisms such as the truth and/or restored cultural objects commissions. “To those” who have not yet helped restore the dignity of the victims “, they asked” to find appropriate ways to do so. Many states have preceded us on this path; By engaging in its turn, our country finally ends a scandalous and unfair situation.

This is why, to rely on requests for a long time formulated by several states of the Maghreb, West Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, and by organizations of some of our territories, I think in particular of Kanaky-New-Caledonia, I instructed the Minister of Culture to carry out the census of all goods, whether cultural, artistic or religious looted in the colonial era, in many museums. At the end of this work, in a few months, they will therefore be returned to their legitimate owners. Even more, we are ready to support them financially so that they can bring them together in adapted public institutions allowing their conservation and exposure in the best conditions. Recognition, repairs and returnThese are the fundamental principles to which we must now be faithful, and I will personally ensure that the government, day after day, respects them.

Finally, ladies and gentlemen, during the next commemorations of May 8, 1945, I would ask the prefects that they recall what happened in Algeria and I hope that the elected officials of all of our territories do the same.

Long live the social, ecological and united republic. »»

The Grandmaison Court, academic. Last work published: State racisms, racist states. A brief historyAmsterdam editions, 2024.

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