Algeria commemorates the "bloodbath" of Setif
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ennahar/ M. Oudina
Massacres of May 8, 1945
Setif (Algeria) - Thousands of people commemorated last Saturday the events of 8 May 1945 in Setif (Eastern Algeria) where "a bloodbath," according to the Algerian minister Mohamed Cherif Abbas, had followed an event commemorating the Allied victory against Nazism, but repressed after the appearance of an algerian flag.
- In silence, participants in the walk have walked the same streets than those used 65 years ago when "the feast of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany on May 8 was then transformed during a month, into a bloodbath," said Mohamed Cherif Abbas, Algerian Minister of Mojahedin (veterans).
May 8 is not just a date "for remembrance, contemplation and sadness, but a reference (...) since the people had now realized the need to seize the gun," he added Friday at a seminar devoted to this anniversary.
The crackdown by French forces had driven the event of riots in Sétif, but also in Guelma, further east, or Kherrata, a mountain town, harshly repressed by the French army and militias.
Some 45,000 people were killed.
« It is a fact that has marked the history of French-Algerian relations (...) and I think that in 2010 it is time that both Algeria and France are aware of the need to reconcile their memory, » said for his part Azouz Begag, former French Minister Delegate for the Promotion of Equal Opportunities.
"We shoud admit that the French army has committed atrocities, killing thousands of people," said Begag who participated in the second Book Fair of Setif, city where his family originates.
Ennaharonline/ M. O.
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