Friday, 15 October and Sunday, 17 October 2021
Screening and protest
Toulouse, France (details below)
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/583726909634091/
Sixty years ago, a peaceful Algerian march for independence was savagely suppressed by the police of Prefect Papon in Paris.
This also marked the establishment of a racist curfew only for French Muslims. This same curfew instituted during the revolts in working-class neighborhoods, applied to the descendants of post-colonial immigration. It was also a night of police violence with many dead and missing — a massacre that has never been officially recognized by the state.
At a time when the government seems to want to rewrite the memory of the war in Algeria, by concealing major events like the Stora report does, at a time when more and more voices, especially since Sarkozy, are rising to extol the benefits of colonization, we would like to recall that this dirty war has caused and still claims many victims.
The Algerian war is an open wound in French society: the million and a half called up are barely beginning to testify. The false history that the French state wishes to impose in order to evade its responsibilities will not lead to a common understanding.
This fight against French colonialism is part of the history of anti-colonial struggles.
These struggles are not a thing of the past. Thus, the settler colonialism suffered by the Algerian people for 132 years is not unlike that against which the Palestinian people have been fighting since the Nakba of 1948, colonization supported by France.
A COLONIAL PAST THAT CONTINUES
Even today, the French state is engaged in neo-colonial wars in Africa. It supports all dictatorships wherever its economic and strategic interests are at stake. It continues to loot the subsoil of the continent, not to mention the maintenance of its domination in Kanaky, the West Indies, Reunion, Mayotte …
It also participates in through its commitment in the Middle East to destabilize the region, often in opposition to international law.
In France, the State applies a policy which is in line with the continuity of colonial policies. The state racism shown by the French government through its racist and Islamophobic campaigns (law against “separatism” to name but one), as well as the police violence of which the descendants of post-colonial immigration are the main victims, are daily examples.
To pay homage to the victims of October 17, 1961, is to pay homage to Algerian independence as well as to the current struggles waged every day by these peoples against the colonial, racist and imperialist states.
Signatories: Attac31, BDS Toulouse, CDK Toulouse, Cgt educ’action 31, CNT31, Collectif Palestine Vaincra, Committee 31 Peace Movement, Committee Truth and Justice 31, MRAP 31, NPA 31, Révolte décoloniale, Solidaires 31, Sud education 31 -65, Sud Santé Social 31, Survie Midi-Pyrénées, UAT, UCL Toulouse and surroundings, UNEF Toulouse
