The National Assembly gave a first green light to the bill to ask for “sorry” and try to “to fix” the prejudices suffered by the harkis and their families, Thursday, November 18. The text, voted on at first reading by 46 votes (1 against and 6 abstentions), is now awaited in the Senate. Almost sixty years after the Algerian war, it is intended to be the legislative translation of a speech by Emmanuel Macron, who asked “sorry” to those Algerians who fought alongside the French army, but who were “abandoned” by France.
The bill combines a memorial dimension and compensation. He recongnizes “the unworthy conditions of the reception” reserved for the 90,000 harkis and their families who fled Algeria after independence in 1962. Almost half of them had been relegated to camps and settlements. “forestry hamlets”. Accordingly, the bill provides “repair” damage with, at the end of the day, a lump sum taking into account the length of stay in these structures. The debates focused on this aspect, because families of harkis and associations demanded before the Assembly extended reparation.
The opposition also demanded compensation for the 90,000 harkis “including those who did not go through transit camps” but were accommodated in “unworthy conditions”. Geneviève Darrieussecq, Minister for Memory and Veterans Affairs, insisted on the “specific damage” of the 50,000 harkis relegated to “six camps”, “sixty-nine forestry hamlets” and “some other homes” of “deprivation of liberty”, a “unique thing, particularly contrary to our republican principles”. There are “gray areas, even 60 years later”, she admitted, however. If additional locations are identified, “of course we will integrate them”.
Some 50 million euros have already been entered in the 2022 draft budget to top up the compensation fund. The global sum of 302 million euros, for several years, is mentioned. But the repair “can’t do everything, she doesn’t erase painful memories”, underlined Geneviève Darrieussecq, who calls to be at “meeting of truth and honor” to shoot one of the “darkest pages in the history of France”.
With this bill, President Macron goes further than his predecessors, recognizing a “debt” towards the harkis and their families. Request “sorry” is far from trivial when it comes to the Algerian conflict, a subject still so hot on both sides of the Mediterranean. Up to 200,000 harkis had been recruited as auxiliaries to the French army during the conflict between 1954 and 1962. A day of homage to the nation is devoted to them every September 25, since a 2003 decree. Symbolically, the deputies have voted Thursday so that this date of September 25 is explicitly “enshrined in law”.