France won’t apologize for Algeria colonization

PARIS — France will not apologize for its colonization of Algeria but will instead commemorate the violent history of its occupation of the North African country.

“There will be no repentance, there will be no apologies,” an adviser to French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday ahead of the release of a much-anticipated report on the history of colonization and the Algerian War.

France was the colonial power in Algeria for 132 years and Algerians won their independence in 1962, after a seven-year war marked by atrocities including acts of torture. This bloody history has overshadowed relations between the countries.

Grievances tied to the colonial history and tensions with French people of Algerian and North African descent have weighed on French national cohesion. They have also been used by terrorists as a radicalization tool.

Though a formal apology for the atrocities committed by France has been demanded by Algeria, France will instead endeavor to face up to its history. “Repentance is vanity, recognition is the truth. Truth is built with actions,” the Macron adviser said.

The report, commissioned by Macron and authored by historian Benjamin Stora, makes a list of recommendations including setting up a “truth and memory” commission, expanding the way colonization is taught in French schools and commemorating three important dates in the countries’ shared history.

“The president wants these initiatives to allow our country to take a lucid look at the wounds of the past, to build, over time, a reconciliation of memories,” a communiqué from the French presidency said.

The question of repentance and recognition of the violence of colonization remains a highly divisive issue in France, and not just among the far-right who have traditionally defended France’s colonial past.

In November, Prime Minister Jean Castex derided the demands for an apology, linking them to previous attempts at appeasing Islamist terrorists.  

Macron, who is the first French president born after Algerian independence, has taken bold positions on the issue since his presidential campaign and taken steps to right the historical wrongs.

“We have this history between us, but I am not its prisoner,” Macron told a young Algerian on a visit to the country seven months into his presidency. “You didn’t live through colonization, why are you entangling me with it?”

As a presidential candidate, he called colonization a “crime against humanity” while on a visit to Algiers, which drew the ire of the far-right. But since assuming office, he has not repeated the statement, even though he has said he fully stands by it.

He has also overseen the return of the skulls of 24 Algerian resistance fighters decapitated during France’s conquest and kept as war trophies by French officers.

He awarded the légion d’honneur, France’s highest civilian honor, to former “harkis” fighters, Algerians who fought on France’s side in the war of independence and set up a solidarity fund, though some harkis organizations said it was too little, too late. Tens of thousands of harkis were left behind and targeted by Algerian nationalists who accused them of treason.

Macron was also the first president to recognize that Maurice Audin, a French communist and anti-colonial activist who disappeared in Algeria in 1957, was “tortured then killed,” which was made possible by a “legally instituted system.”