When Yasmina Adi got access to archives documenting the 1961 repression of Algerian protesters in Paris, she was shocked to uncover a trove of material relating to gaps in the story of one of the most contested events in recent French history.
As Algeria’s battle for independence spilled into France, Paris police chief Maurice Papon ordered police to crack down on thousands of Algerian protesters who defied a curfew on Oct. 17, 1961. Dozens of bodies were later pulled from the River Seine.
Papon, who died in 2007, was the only French Nazi official to be convicted for his role in the deportation of Jews during World War II. France has acknowledged the deaths of 40 people in the 1961 incident, but Adi says her research suggests it was much worse.
Photo: AFP
“This period remains a blank page. France doesn’t recognize Oct. 17 in school history books, it is not mentioned. Nothing you saw is in textbooks,” Adi, who is of Algerian origin, said after Here, We Drown Algerians – October 17, 1961, which she directed, aired at the Dubai International Film Festival last week. “The people you saw are getting old, so this is an attempt to maintain the historical memory.”
The documentary is narrated through the testimony of Algerians dragged off the streets by police and uses archive footage showing haunting images of thousands held in detention centers, transported in buses and sitting in airplanes during deportation.
A media campaign branded the protesters as Muslim terrorists, Adi’s film says.
Some, such as Hadda Khalfi, one of the main interviewees who explains how her husband disappeared, never to return, have never received an apology or compensation from the state.
“I managed to [access] the archives of the police department and state archives, which even some historians have not got permission to see. Then I asked myself what security bodies were there and I found they all had their own archives,” Adi said. “It was the same for the filmed material ... sometimes I noticed there were two people taking photos, so I said I have to go find them.”
“So I pieced together each part, when they put the Algerians on buses, when they detained them at the police department, the unseen photos from the Palais du Sport, the expulsions, the women’s protest. At a certain point I said to myself ‘wow,’” she said.
The true number of those who died may never be known.
“It’s difficult to establish a figure. Some say 100, some say 200, some say 400, it’s complicated. The police prefecture has a list of dead, but these lists are not trustworthy,” Adi said. “We could say around more than 1,500 were expelled.”
Adi took the title for the film from graffiti daubed on a bridge over the Seine on Oct. 28, 1961, and caught on camera before the authorities could remove it. The words and the image she says dropped out of France’s collective consciousness for decades.
She says France’s unwillingness to offer more public recognition of what happened in those days contrasts with France’s championing of Arab Spring causes, such as Libya, which was taken up by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Bernard Henri-Levy, a prominent public intellectual in France.
“Sarkozy has said a few weeks ago why should Turkey be in Europe? If you Turks want to be in Europe you have to recognize the Armenian genocide. Before giving lessons to others, France ought to look at itself in history,” she said. “As citizens, we should not allow ourselves to be manipulated by methods, images, language, because they cross time and governments take up the same methods and language.”
France has had a complex relationship with Algeria since it was forced to give up a colony it ruled for 132 years in 1962 after a bitter war. Sarkozy has refused to apologize for Algerian dead.
France considered Algeria an integral part of the French state and more than 1 million French fled the country in the months before Algeria finally became independent.
Adi said she was surprised to see large audiences of young French people attending the screenings of her film in France when it was released in October.
“There were few Algerians, but many French at the screenings, because many young people in particular are rediscovering the past and realizing it’s not an Algerian problem, but a Franco-Algerian problem,” she said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in