Paris: With French President Emmanuel Macron will announce “repair” for Harkis on Monday, we see the gloomy fate of Algeria Muslim who fights on the French side during their independence war.
Until 200,000 HARKIS – the name came from Arabic words for “movement” – fighting for French colonial power during a bloody war from 1954 to 1962 with the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN).
After the peace agreement that provided Algerian independence was signed on March 18, 1962, only around 42,000 days were allowed to go to France, some bring their wives and children.
The French government initially refused to recognize their right to stay.
In all of up to 90,000 men, women and children escape.
The rest remains in Algeria, where many are slaughtered.
Hanki activists in France who tried to demand Algeria in 2001 for crimes against humanity, claimed 150,000 dead.
Those who were fortunate enough to get to France were held for years in dirty internal camps.
Hated as a traitor in Algeria, in France Harkis is a uncomfortable reminder for the country’s painful defeat.
The seven-year-old independence war in Algeria saw Nationalists rose against and finally defeated their French colonial rulers.
There are cruelty on both sides and the remaining conflicts of at least 400,000 dead.
About half a million days and their descendants live in France today.
They have struggled to fight for decades, including strikes and hunger demonstrations, for official recognition of what happened to those left in Algeria.
Their integration to France has been difficult because they are considered immigrants but are rejected by other immigrants.
In 2000, President Algeria Abdelaziz Bouteflika compared them to the Nazi collaborator during a visit to Paris.
While criticizing the conditions in which they took place in France, he ruled out them to Algeria.
In September 2001, France held his first national day to honor Harkis.
After the right-wing politician strengthened to their causes – often during the election time – but with a few concrete results, in September 2016 Socialist President Francois Hollande officially admitted that France “left” Harkis.
“I realized the responsibility of the French government in leaving Harkis, their massacre who remained in Algeria and human conditions for those who were transferred to camps in France,” Hollande said.
Two years later the 40 million euro assistance package was created for them and their families.
In the same year the highest court in the country ordered the state to pay compensation to the Putra Harki for damage to his health in camps.
The Harkis: Soldier ‘betrayed’ from the French Algerian war
