Algeria’s parliament has unanimously passed a law declaring France’s 132-year colonisation of the country a crime, while demanding an official apology and reparations from Paris.
Lawmakers stood in the chamber wearing scarves in the national colours and chanted “Long live Algeria” as they celebrated the bill’s approval. The legislation states that France bears “legal responsibility for its colonial past in Algeria and the tragedies it caused.”
Parliament Speaker Brahim Boughali said the move sends “a clear message internally and externally that Algeria’s national memory is neither erasable nor negotiable.”
The law details what it calls the “crimes of French colonisation,” including:
• extrajudicial killings
• physical and psychological torture
• nuclear testing in the Sahara
• systematic exploitation of resources
It further declares that “full and fair compensation for all material and moral damages caused by French colonisation is an inalienable right of the Algerian state and people.”
France ruled Algeria from 1830 until independence in 1962 after a brutal eight-year war. Algeria says 1.5 million people were killed, while most French historians estimate the total deaths at around 500,000, the majority of them Algerians.
Relations between Algiers and Paris have been strained in recent years. French President Emmanuel Macron has previously described colonisation in Algeria as a “crime against humanity”, but has stopped short of issuing a formal apology.