Despite successive generations, the Algerian people will not forget these crimes against humanity and this painful page in its history, at a time when the former colonizer persists in ignoring the crimes committed against Algerians and deny its colonial past.
“Faithful to the immeasurable sacrifices made by the Algerian people, the State is determined, in the new Algeria, to put the issue of history and memory on a path which will ensure transparency, integrity and total objectivity, far from any concession or bargaining", had affirmed the President of the Republic, Mr. Abdelmadjid Tebboune on a previous occasion, during which he had expressed "his resolute determination to defend the right of the Algerian people, by intensifying the steps to address, with courage and fairness, the question of history and memory, while ensuring the necessary transparency to this sensitive issue.
With this in mind, he underlined the importance of the mission entrusted to the joint commission of historians of the two countries to deal with all questions, including those relating to the restitution of archives, property and mortuary remains of resistance fighters and nuclear tests. and the missing".
History remains witness to the atrocity of the heinous massacres committed by the colonizer's executioners, showing world public opinion the true face of colonial France.
This tragic episode in our history paved the way for the internationalization of the Algerian cause and its inclusion in the United Nations Assembly, while demonstrating to Algerians the imperative of armed struggle against the forces of evil who have not never kept their promises.
As the French celebrated, in May 1945, the victory of the Allies against Nazi Germany and the end of the Second World War, tens of thousands of Algerians took to the streets of Sétif, Kherrata, Guelma and other cities to peacefully demand the independence of Algeria promised by France, but the French government responded with violence and brutality, leaving 45,000 martyrs.
The French army used lime kilns to dispose of the dead bodies of victims, transporting people in trucks to dump them in wadis or executing them outside towns and then burying them in mass graves.
The French academic and historian Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison regretted "France's silence" on the massacres of May 8, 1945, stressing that the "descendants of these victims are still awaiting recognition of these crimes" by France.
In a column published a few years ago on "France's colonial adventure", the intellectuals François Gèze, Gilles Manceron, Fabrice Riceputi and Alain Ruscio estimated that it remained for the highest authorities of the State French "many things" to say to "recognize the massacres of May 8, 1945 in Algeria".