Blood on the Seine …

At five months of the end of the war in Algeria, October 17, 1961, Paris was the site of one of the largest massacres of the common people in contemporary history of Western Europe. That day, tens of thousands of Algerians demonstrating peacefully against the curfew that targets since October 5 and repression organized by the Seine prefect of police, Maurice Papon representative of the French state. The police response will be terrible. Dozens of Algerians, perhaps between 150 and 200, are executed. Some bodies are found in the Seine. For decades, the memory of this major episode in the war of Algeria will be obscured.This is an event of exceptional gravity, the death toll has told two British historians [Jim House and Neil MacMaster, it is state repression the most violent that has ever caused a street demonstration in Western Europe in modern history.

Thus, Papon convinced colonialist, officiated in the Constantine in Algeria in 1945, 1949 and 1951 and between 1956 and 1958, after a stint in Morocco in 1954-1955. The repressive measures against political moves he then set up in the territories of the empire will be standardized during the war in Algeria: Census and fichages, discriminatory laws, curfews, raids, centers and detention camps, torture , judgments hasty military courts sanctioned by the heaviest punishment (death penalty, imprisonment for life) – but also large-scale killings with impunity. After all his criminal course of war the French state appointed him prefect of police in Paris.

October 17, 1961, fascism, racism showed his face to light. It was not an « incident » passenger. The vile beast held in check by the ruling class and its state apparatus is in reserve. Today we must be vigilant. A modern form of fascism is emerging through the state apparatus, because these ideas are not conveyed by the extreme right, fascist or neo-Nazi groups. The rise of this new form can be developed using the old methods from the past such as racism and hatred and Islamophobia to divide the people and create chaos.

Never forget what France did to Algeria … We turn the page, but never, we will never forget.