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When Algerians were invited to national liberation ceremonies
May 8, 45
At the end of the Second World War, the French population was bloodless. What would we say about the “native” populations of the French colonies, particularly Algerians, who had just participated in the war effort through the forced mobilization of more than 150,000 Algerian riflemen, 12,000 of whom died fighting for France? In all these colonized countries, notably Algeria, the populations are overwhelmed with poverty and starvation. However, the rumbling of the revolt is already disturbing the social atmosphere. The anti-colonialist insurrection, hidden behind the catastrophic din of the French rout, accentuated later by the collapse of the Vichy regime, honed its weapons. The hour of anti-colonial armed struggle sounds the alarm of the awakening of subversive political consciousness and liberating militant activities.
After the long sleep of enslavement marked by nightmarish colonial life, the insurrectional uprising resolved to leave its peaceful bed in order to take the stormy path of revolution to throw itself into the odyssey of national independence inscribed in the history of the emancipation of peoples.
Against the pusillanimity of the collaborationist indigenous political authorities working for the maintenance of French Algeria or, at best, independence by legal and peaceful means, conceived within the framework of the French Union and the preservation of the economic interests of France , new patriotic revolutionary organizations set as their maximalist program the armed uprising against the colonialist French power. The baptism of fire began in Algeria on May 8, 1945.
On this day of the liberation of France from the Nazi yoke, while the French population joyfully celebrates its regained freedom, the Algerians believe it is appropriate to invite themselves to the festivities of the National Liberations to also claim their independence, the restoration of their national sovereignty. But, in the eyes of colonial France, the independence of Algeria is not included in its menu of the restoration of freedoms, the recovery of national sovereignty, the banquet of popular and democratic emancipations. Algerians cannot claim to taste the delights of Liberation, reserved, according to the colonial conception, only for the French. The Algerian must still continue to eat the French mad cow. To endure the colonial yoke. Feeding colonial France. Toiling for the Blackfoot, these squires with feet of clay. Living in poverty under the code of indigeneity.
However, without having received an announcement, the Algerian people invited themselves to the liberating ceremonies by their resolution to enter into the historical emancipatory sequence begun on May 8, 1945, the day of the Liberation of many countries from the Nazi German yoke. He took to the streets to also demand his national independence. In jubilation, in several Algerian cities, usually marked by racial and spatial segregation and social relegation, popular demonstrations broke out. Algerians parade with national pride triumphing over liberating hopes. By the thousands, peaceful unarmed demonstrators chant freedom slogans: “Independence”, “Free Messali Hadj”, “Algeria is ours”.
For the first time in the history of Algeria, a surprise guest, adorned in green and white with a red crescent and star, proudly joined the peaceful crowd to become the sacred standard of the people Algerian independence movement: the Algerian flag, hoisted triumphantly by Bouzid Saal and Aïssa Cheraga.
Algerian nationalists also hold banners reading: “Down with fascism and colonialism”. “We want to be your equals.” In this new sequence in the history of the liberations of colonized peoples, Algerian demonstrators lead the charge for national independence. However, colonial France does not intend to let this concert of freedom intone its first liberating vocalizations, allowing the Algerians to delight the streets with their demand for the independence of Algeria, shouted revolutionaryly at the top of their lungs in the face of the world.
As usual, colonial France responded violently. The head of government, Charles de Gaulle, orders the intervention of the army. More than 2,000 soldiers were sent to Algeria, supported by the foreign legion, Moroccan goumiers and Senegalese riflemen. To restore the colonial order and terrorize the Algerians, French armed troops and militias made up of civilians carried out the “pacification” of the regions raised to claim the independence of Algeria. The colonial state established a curfew at 1 p.m. A state of siege is declared at 8 p.m. Martial law declared. Weapons are distributed to the Europeans, that is to say the Blackfoot, who will not fail to use them against the “Arabs” and the “Muslims” to massacre them en masse.
The repression is bloody. France bloodily represses these demonstrations. For several weeks, the French soldiers, supported by tanks and planes, were unleashed against the unarmed Algerian population. An over-armed European militia is formed. It engages in the hunting of any Algerian person and summary executions. The civil and military courts severely condemn the arrested Algerians. Thousands of soldiers are mobilized to repress the Algerian population without distinction: men, women, children. Worse: warships fire from the Bougie harbor on the Sétif region, the air force bombs the population even to the most remote douars. Entire villages are decimated, burned, families burned alive.
Repression is becoming widespread. It extends throughout the country. The genocidal massacre lasts several weeks. Many bodies were thrown into wells in the Kherrata gorges. European militiamen, in other words French, use lime kilns to make the corpses disappear. After having reestablished colonial order at the cost of the massacre of 45,000 Algerians, the arrest of 4,000 people, and around a hundred death sentences, the colonial authorities carried out surrender ceremonies during which the Algerian men were reunited. in village squares to be forced to prostrate themselves before the French flag and repeat in chorus: “We are dogs and Ferhat Abbas is a dog”. Thus, to defend its colonial empire and preserve its status as a great world power, the France perpetrated a genocide against the Algerian people. This genocidal repressive policy only complies with the measures dictated by General de Gaulle, then head of government, by telegram to the colonial army: “Please take all necessary measures to repress all anti-French actions of a minority of agitators.” Charles de Gaulle, praised by French historiography, is a war criminal (or, rather, a genocidaire of Algerian civilians).
In one of his texts, the Algerian writer Kateb Yacine, an eyewitness, immortalized these tragic events which traumatized him: “It was in 1945 that my humanitarianism was confronted for the first time with the most atrocious spectacle. I was twenty years old. The shock I felt at the merciless butchery which caused the death of several thousand Muslims, I have never forgotten. This is where my nationalism is cemented.” “I testify that the May 8 demonstration was peaceful. By organizing a demonstration that was intended to be peaceful, we were taken by surprise. The leaders had not anticipated reactions. It ended in tens of thousands of casualties. In Guelma, my mother lost her memory… We saw corpses everywhere, in all the streets. The repression was indiscriminate; it was a great massacre.”
Results: 45,000 Algerian “natives” massacred, exterminated by the French colonial authorities and the pieds-noirs. Not to mention the other thousands of victims arrested, tortured and imprisoned. Against the Algerian people, in the eyes of History, France committed a Crime against humanity.
As a reminder, during these weeks of genocidal massacres in the metropolis, French political and trade union organizations shone through their criminal silence. No political group denounces the repressions and abuses, even less supports the Algerian people who have risen to demand their independence. Likewise, the leaders of the labor movement showed no sympathy for the insurgent Algerians. On the contrary, they virulently condemn them.
It is of the utmost importance to note that this bloody colonial military intervention of French imperialism is supervised by a government dominated by socialists, in which also members of the French Communist Party (PCF). The latter occupies, among others, the Ministry of National Defense, headed by François Billoux, and the Ministry of Air and Armaments, led by Charles Tillon. Two ministries which played a key role in the mass massacre of the Algerian people on May 8, 1945.
In May 1945, the Communist Party showed no opposition to sending military reinforcements to bloodily crush the uprising of the Algerian people, who took to the streets to peacefully demand their independence.
During the crushing of the uprising of the Algerian people, the French Communist Party, a member of the governing coalition of the French colonial state, observed criminal silence. He demonstrates his unwavering support for the French colonial empire.
L’Humanité, the daily newspaper of the French Communist Party, denounced on May 19, 1945 the “pseudo-nationalist leaders who knowingly tried to deceive the Muslim masses, thus playing into the hands of the hundred lords in their attempt to break between the Algerian populations and the people of France.” The Stalinist newspaper calls on the government to show severity against the Algerian “insurgents”, going so far as to demand that “measures be taken against the leaders of this pseudo-national association whose members participated in the tragic incidents”. Later, the same rag, L’Humanité, insinuated that the Algerian demonstrators were Nazi sympathizers, “troubled elements of Hitlerian inspiration.” [qui] engaged in an armed attack in Sétif against the population who were celebrating the liberation of France from the German yoke.
Khider Mesloub