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- Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune referred to as for dialogue with France.
- Tebboune desires discussions on the 1961 crackdown in Paris.
- Algeria will observe a minute’s silence for the victims of the crackdown.
Algeria’s president referred to as on Saturday for an method freed from “colonialist thought” on historic points between his nation and France, in a message marking the sixtieth anniversary of a lethal Paris police crackdown.
On the night time of 17 October 1961, throughout Algeria’s 1954-1962 struggle of independence from France, Algerians residing in Paris had been urged to assemble within the centre of the capital for what was billed as a peaceable march in opposition to repression.
READ | Algeria court docket sentences brother of deposed late president Abdelaziz Bouteflika to 2 years in jail
However as night time fell, witnesses recall seeing folks shot with reside ammunition and others killed when police charged into the group armed with thick picket sticks and batons.
The exact variety of victims has by no means been made clear and a few activists concern a number of hundred might have been killed.
“I reaffirm our robust concern for treating problems with historical past and reminiscence with out complacency or compromising rules, and with a pointy sense of accountability”, free from “the dominance of boastful colonialist thought”, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune stated.
The lethal 1961 crackdown reveals the horror of “massacres and crimes in opposition to humanity that can stay engraved within the collective reminiscence”, he stated in an announcement launched by his workplace.
Strained relationship
The message got here shortly after Tebboune declared that Algeria would observe a minute’s silence every 17 October in reminiscence of the victims.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday condemned the crackdown as “inexcusable”.
Relations between Paris and Algiers have been strained amid a diplomatic spat fuelled by a visa row and feedback attributed to the Macron describing Algeria as dominated by a “political-military system” that had “completely re-written” its historical past.
Algeria has recalled its ambassador from Paris and banned French army planes from its airspace.
Tebboune has demanded France’s “complete respect”.
“We overlook that it (Algeria) was as soon as a French colony… Historical past shouldn’t be falsified,” he stated final week.
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