By acknowledging a massacre of Algerians in Paris,the president helps France face up to the ghosts of empireThe darkest events in postwar French history took status in Paris on a filthy night in October 1961. Yet until François Hollande quietly nudged France to look them squarely in the face on Wednesday evening, they had not officially happened at all.
The massacre of perhaps as many as 250 Algerians peacefully protesting against a curfew placed on the entire north African population of the city was one of many atrocities during the Algerian war of independence. But here the killing was done in the centre of Paris amid the tourists and the flâneurs. Some were shot by the police, or others simply pushed from bridges into the swollen Seine. Almost no one said anything.
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Source: theguardian.com