Algeria passes law declaring French colonisation a crime

Algeria’s parliament has unanimously approved a law declaring France’s colonisation of the country a crime and demanded an apology and reparations.Lawmakers, standing in the chamber wearing scarves in the colours of the national flag, chanted “long live Algeria” on Wednesday as they applauded the passage of the bill, which states that France holds “legal responsibility for its colonial past in Algeria and the tragedies it caused”.The two countries are embroiled in a major diplomatic crisis and analysts say that while Algeria’s move is largely symbolic, it is still politically significant.The parliament speaker, Ibrahim Boughali, told the APS state news agency that the vote would send “a clear message, both internally and externally, that Algeria’s national memory is neither erasable nor negotiable”.The legislation lists the “crimes of French colonisation”, which include nuclear tests, extrajudicial killings, “physical and psychological torture” and the “systematic plundering of resources”.Lawmakers, wearing scarves in the colours of the national flag, chanted ‘long live Algeria’ as they applauded the passage of the bill. Photograph: Fateh Guidoum/APIt states that “full and fair compensation for all material and moral damages caused by French colonisation is an inalienable right of the Algerian state and people”.France’s rule over Algeria from 1830 until 1962 wasa period marked by mass killings and large-scale deportations, all the way up to the bloody war of independence from 1954 to 1962.Algeria says the war killed 1.5 million people, while French historians put the death toll at 500,000 in total, 400,000 of them Algerian.The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has previously acknowledged the colonisation of Algeria as a “crime against humanity” but has stopped short of offering an apology.Asked last week about the vote, the French foreign ministry spokesperson, Pascal Confavreux, said he would not comment on “political debates taking place in foreign countries”.Hosni Kitouni, a researcher in colonial history at the University of Exeter in the UK, said that “legally, this law has no international scope and therefore is not binding for France”. However, “its political and symbolic significance is important: it marks a rupture in the relationship with France in terms of memory,” he said.