Paris: President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday will become the first Head of France to participate in the commemoration of the massacre by the Paris police demonstrators at a general meeting of 60 years ago against the French government in Algeria.
The events of October 17, 1961 were closed for decades and the last death toll was still unclear.
But many historians believe it can amount to several hundred.
The rally was summoned in the last year of France’s efforts were increasingly hard to defend Algeria as a colony of North Africa, and in the midst of a bombing campaign targeting the French land with pro-independence militants.
On Saturday, one day before the formal warning, Macron would take part in a warning ceremony for the victims in the park on the outskirts of Paris from 1330 GMT.
The main question was whether he was issued an official apology for the Paris police action that day or revealed regret, because the President tried to carve modern relations with the French past.
The Paris police chief at the time, Maurice Papon, was later found to have collaborated with Nazis during World War II.
Elysee said the ceremony would take place before the relatives of the victims, civil society activists who had campaigned for the recognition of slaughter and veteran for the struggle of Algerian independence.
Acton expect activists, the first president born in the post-colonial era, will go further from his predecessor Francois Hollande, who admitted in 2012 that Algerian protest was “killed during bloody repression”.
The campaigners wanted apologies, reparations for victims or recognition that the repression was a crime of state.
The 1961 protest was called in response to a strict curfew applied to Algeria to prevent the underground FLN resistance movement from raising funds after a series of deadly attacks on French police officers.
Some of the worst violence occurred at the Saint Michel Bridge near the Notre-Dame Cathedral where the witnesses reported seeing the police throwing Algeria to the Seine River where unknown numbers sank.
“There is a state closing, state lie.
There is a government statement from October 18 which tried to burden the FLN and Algeria,” said Historian Emmanuel Blanchard to AFP.
Macron, which is expected to seek the re-election of next year, may be alert about provoking a counter-attack from political opponents or the French police in his comments.
The opponents of their distant election, Nationalist Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, are criticism of efforts spoken to acknowledge or show repentance for past crimes.
Another complication is the ongoing diplomatic lines between Paris and Algiers driven by comments that are associated with Macron which describes the state as ruled by “political-military system” which is “completely rewritten”.
A report assigned by the President of historian Benjamin Stora earlier this year urged the truth commission for the Algerian war but Macron decided to issue any official apology.
Macron Marks 60 years since Paris Algeria protested the massacre
