ANKARA: France Left Algerian Genocide to Historians Again

[Emil Lazarian]

Journal of Turkish Weekly, Turkey
Aug 28 2005

France Left Algerian Genocide to Historians Again
PARIS - France, which at every occasion demands Turkey to reconsider
its stance concerning the Armenian issue, said such questions
remained within the range of historians when it came to the Algerian
Genocide.

French Foreign Ministry responded to Algerian President Abdulaziz
Bouteflika's call to France to repent for what France perpetrated in
Algeria during the colonial period, by relegating such historical
inquiries to historians'.

French Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jean-Baptist Mattei refraining
from commenting on Bouteflika's call, said the matter would be
settled in one way or another. Mattei maintained historians and
researchers had to study that subject in an independent way.

In a speech he delivered at Setif on Thursday, Bouteflika called on
France to recognize the fact that it tortured, killed and destroyed
Algerian people between the years of 1830-1962 to eradicate their
Algerian, Muslim, Arab and Berber identities, and their culture,
history and language. France, which does not respond to Algeria's
calls, manifested a politically biased attitude in 2001 despite
Turkey's warning, and legislated a law that ruled the 1915 incidents
as genocide.

Dr. David M. Arayan accused France of having double-standard:

`There are many genocides and massacres committed by the French in
the past. Algerian Genocide is one of them. They massacred thousands
of Algerian civilians with no mercy. And now they are talking about
other nations' so-called crimes. They abuse the past. The French
politicians ignore their responsibilities now and in the past, and
instead of taking responsibilities they choose the easiest way: To
accuse the others. They discuss the 1915 events for hours and hours
yet they cannot accept the real genocide they committed just couple
of decades ago.'