Sétif and Guelma massacre

Map of Algeria showing Sétif province

The Sétif massacre refers to widespread disturbances and killings in and around the Algerian market town of Sétif located to the west of Constantine in 1945. Shooting by the French authorities against local demonstrators occurred on 8 May 1945. Then, riots in the town itself were followed by attacks on French colons (settlers) in the surrounding countryside resulting in 103 deaths. Subsequent reprisals by French authorities and vigilantes are estimated to have caused much greater numbers of deaths amongst the Muslim population of the region. Both the outbreak and the indiscriminate nature of its repression are believed to have marked a turning point in Franco-Algerian relations. Algerians characterize this incident as genocide.

Outbreak

The initial outbreak occurred on the morning of May 8, 1945, the same day that Nazi Germany surrendered in World War II. A parade by about 5,000 of the Muslim Algerian population of Sétif to celebrate Victory in Europe Day ended in clashes between the marchers and the local French gendarmerie, when the latter tried to seize banners attacking colonial rule. Many protestors were shot. Attacks on pieds noirs (French settlers) in the neighbouring countryside then resulted in the deaths of 103 Europeans, mostly civilians, plus another hundred wounded. The historian Alistair Horne alleges that there were a number of rapes and that many of the corpses were mutilated.

French reprisals

After five days of chaos, French military and police restored order but then carried out a series of reprisals. The army, which included Foreign Legion and Senegalese troops, carried out summary executions. Less accessible mechtas (Muslim villages) were bombed by French aircraft, and the cruiser Duguay-Trouin standing off the coast in the Gulf of Bougie, shelled Kerrata. Pied noir vigilantes lynched prisoners taken from local jails or randomly shot Muslims not wearing white arm bands (as instructed by the Army) out of hand. It is certain that the great majority of the Muslim victims had not been implicated in the original outbreak.

These reprisals killed anywhere between 1,020 (the official French figure given in the Tubert Report shortly after the massacre) and 45,000 people (as claimed by Radio Cairo at the time). Alistair Horne notes that 6,000 was the figure finally settled on by moderate historians but acknowledges that this remains only an estimate. The Sétif outbreak and the repression that followed marked a turning point in the relations between France, which had colonized Algeria since 1830, and the Muslim population. While the details of the Sétif killings were largely overlooked in metropolitan France, the impact on the Algerian Muslim population was traumatic, especially on the large numbers of Muslim soldiers in the French Army who were then returning from the War in Europe. Nine years later a general uprising began in Algeria, leading to independence from France in March 1962 with the signing of the Evian Accords.

Context

The anti-colonialist movement had started organizing itself before World War II, under Messali Hadj and Ferhat Abbas. Anti-French sentiment had been building across Algeria for months, leading to thousand-person protests in such cities as Mostaganem in the previous weeks. With the end of World War II, 4,000 protesters took to the streets of Sétif, a town in northern Algeria, to press new demands for independence on the colonial government.

Impact on modern Algerian/French relations

In February 2005, Hubert Colin de Verdière, France's ambassador to Algeria, formally apologized for the massacre, calling it an “inexcusable tragedy”. It was the most explicit comments by the French state on the massacre.

President of Algeria Abdelaziz Bouteflika has called the Sétif massacre the beginning of a “genocide” perpetrated during the Algerian War by the French occupation forces. This accusation of genocide was swiftly denounced by the French government and by various French historians, although massacres, the use of torture and other human rights abuses by both sides were not questioned. All in all, the Algerian War and its consequences remains an important memory stake in both countries.

Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in response to France passing a bill criminalizing denial of the Armenian Genocide, accused France of committing genocide in Algeria.

Bibliography

• Yves Courrière, La guerre d'Algérie, tome 1 (Les fils de la Toussaint), Fayard, Paris 1969, ISBN 2213611181
• Jean Louis Planche, Sétif 1945, histoire d'un massacre annoncé, Perrin, Paris 2006
• Roger Vétillard, Sétif. Mai 1945. Massacres en Algérie, éd. de Paris, 2008
• Eugène Vallet, Un drame algérien. La vérité sur les émeutes de mai 1945, éd. Grandes éditions françaises, 1948
• Alistair Horne, “A Savage War of Peace. Algeria 1954–62”, ISBN 0-670-61964-7

See also

• List of massacres in Algeria
• French Algeria
• Algerian War (1954–62)
• Outside the Law (2010 film)

External links

• PARIS' GAME TURNS AGAINST DUE TO ALGERIA
• 'I saw Algerian soldiers massacre civilians'
• Massacre in Algeria
• A 1961 Massacre of Algerians in Paris When the Media Failed the Test James J. Napoli
• Algeria — the war didn’t end in 1945
• Algeria Asks France to Recognize Algerian Genocide