France to mark 60 years since hushed up Paris massacre

Algerian demonstrators arrested in Puteaux, west of Paris, wait, with their hands above their heads, to be questioned by police, October 17, 1961. (AFP)
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Updated 14 October 2021
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France to mark 60 years since hushed up Paris massacre

  • Algerian demonstrators were shot with live ammunition, while others were severely beaten when police baton-charged the crowd
  • Some of the worst violence occurred on the Saint Michel bridge, near Notre-Dame cathedral, where police tossed demonstrators into the Seine

PARIS: Djamila Amrane was a young mother in 1961 when she attended a Paris demonstration that would be targeted by what many historians consider to be post-war Europe’s deadliest police violence.
The rally was called in the final year of France’s increasingly violent attempt to retain Algeria as a north African colony, and in the middle of a bombing campaign targeting mainland France by pro-independence militants.
Algerians living in Paris were urged to gather in the center of the capital, dressed in their best clothes and with their children, for what was billed as a peaceful march against repression. Amrane, then in her late 20s, took her newborn baby.
But as night fell, witnesses recall seeing people shot with live ammunition and others killed when police charged into the crowd armed with thick wooden sticks and batons.
The final death toll is still unknown, but historians agree it was at least several dozen and possibly several hundred.
Amrane, who was a member of the pro-independence FLN group, was one of the estimated 30,000 people who turned out at dusk, but she sensed danger from the start.
“Some women I asked to come had got dressed up as if they were going to a party,” she said. “But I knew what we risked. I wanted to be able to run,” she told AFP in an interview.
The events of 17 October 1961 were covered up for decades, but the 60th anniversary of the atrocity, this Sunday, has led to fresh calls for more public recognition.
Campaigning is being driven by new generations of French people from immigrant backgrounds who want a more public reckoning with the crimes of the colonial era — a demand also made by the recent Black Lives Matter movement.
Efforts by centrist President Emmanuel Macron to “look our history in the face,” notably via a landmark report in January into France’s occupation of Algeria, have also helped break taboos around the issue.
Amrane is hoping that, as the first president born in the post-colonial era, Macron will go further than his predecessor Francois Hollande, who acknowledged in 2012 that protesting Algerians had been “killed during a bloody repression.”
Campaigners want an apology, reparations for the victims, or recognition that the repression constituted a state crime.
“It’s about time, no?” said Amrane, now aged 87.
The protests were called in response to a strict curfew imposed on Algerians to prevent the underground FLN resistance movement from collecting funds following a spate of deadly attacks on French police officers.
Algerians in France at the time were frequent victims of police roundups and harassment, but the violent repression of the demonstration was of a different order.
Witnesses say the live ammunition started shortly after protesters emerged from metro stations. Others suffered serious head injuries when police charged into the crowd.
Some of the worst violence occurred on the Saint Michel bridge near the Notre-Dame cathedral where police were seen tossing Algerians into the river Seine where an unknown number of them were lost to the currents.
This gave rise to the famous graffiti — “We drown Algerians here” — which was scrawled across the bridge and later became the title of a book on the events of that day.
“There was a state cover-up, a state lie. There were government statements from the morning of October 18 that sought to incriminate the FLN and the Algerians,” historian Emmanuel Blanchard told AFP.
The Paris police chief at the time, Maurice Papon, was later found to have collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
Macron is expected to be wary about provoking a backlash from political opponents or the French police on Sunday when he will acknowledge the anniversary.
He is expected to seek re-election next year, and France’s colonial history and the issue of racially motivated police violence remain both divisive and bitterly contested.
His far-right electoral opponents, nationalists Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, are outspoken critics of efforts to acknowledge or show repentance for past crimes.
Another complication is an ongoing diplomatic row between Paris and Algiers.
“Emmanuel Macron will probably look for a compromise,” Blanchard said.
This will not be enough to satisfy campaigners, or survivors like Amrane.
She said she might have died that night, or lost her two-month-old baby, had a blonde-haired French woman not opened her front door and dragged her in off the street.
As she remembered others who were not so lucky, her throat tightened and her voice tailed off.
“My memories are very clear, but I try to forget them,” she said.


Brazil’s president accuses Israel of ‘premeditated genocide’ in Gaza

Updated 2 sec ago
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Brazil’s president accuses Israel of ‘premeditated genocide’ in Gaza

“It’s a premeditated genocide from a far-right government,” da Silva said

PARIS: Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Thursday during a trip to Paris accused Israel of carrying out “premeditated genocide” in the Palestinian territory of Gaza.

“It’s a premeditated genocide from a far-right government that is waging a war against the interests of its own people,” he said at a joint press conference with France’s President Emmanuel Macron.

While Lula has previously used the term “genocide,” Macron has refused to, saying last month it was not for a “political leader to use to term but up to historians to do so when the time comes.”

Detained Greenpeace activists to face judge over Macron waxwork

Updated 05 June 2025
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Detained Greenpeace activists to face judge over Macron waxwork

  • Activists stole a 40,000-euro statue of Macron and placed it in front of the Russian embassy and later outside the headquarters of French electricity giant EDF to protest France’s economic ties with Russia

PARIS: Two Greenpeace activists who stole French President Emmanuel Macron’s waxwork from a Paris museum to stage anti-Russia protests have been detained and were set to appear before an investigating judge on Thursday, their lawyer and prosecutors said.

On Monday, several activists stole a 40,000-euro statue of Macron from the Grevin Museum and placed it in front of the Russian embassy and later outside the headquarters of French electricity giant EDF to protest France’s economic ties with Russia.

The statue, estimated to be worth 40,000 euros ($45,500), was returned to police on Tuesday night but two activists, a man and a woman, were detained on Monday, their lawyer Marie Dose said.

Jean-François Julliard, head of Greenpeace France, said that the detained pair were people who drove a truck during the protest in front of the Russian embassy, and not those who “borrowed” the statue from the museum.

“They have spent three nights in a cell,” said Dose, denouncing the detention as “completely disproportionate.”

The lawyer denounced the “deplorable” conditions in which the two activists were being held, “attached to benches for hours and dragged from police station to police station.”

One activist spent the night without a blanket and was unable to lie down because her cell was too small, the lawyer said.

“The other had to sleep on the floor because there were too many people in the cell,” she added.

“This treatment is worrying for Greenpeace activists and raises the question of a dangerous shift in the criminal response to acts of civil disobedience,” she said.

The pair will appear before an investigating magistrate on Thursday as part of a judicial inquiry into the “theft of a cultural object on display,” the Paris prosecutor’s office told AFP.

The judge will decide whether to charge them.

The lawyer argued that “no harm resulted from the non-violent action,” arguing that “all offenses” ceased to exist once the statue has been returned to the museum.

The Grevin Museum filed a complaint on Monday but subsequently took the matter in good humor. “The figures can only be viewed on site,” it said on its Instagram feed.

The activists managed to slip out through an emergency exit of the museum by posing as maintenance workers.


Suspect in murder of Tunisian man to appear before French judge: prosecutors

Updated 05 June 2025
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Suspect in murder of Tunisian man to appear before French judge: prosecutors

PARIS: A Frenchman accused of murdering his Tunisian neighbor in the south of France will appear before an anti-terrorism judge on Thursday, the national anti-terror prosecutor’s office said.

Christophe B. is accused of killing Hichem Miraoui in an attack Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau described as both “racist” and “anti-Muslim.”

Anti-terrorism prosecutors have taken over the case, the first time a far-right racist attack has been treated as a “terrorist” offense since the unit was created in 2019.


Russia to repair warplanes damaged by Ukraine’s drones

Updated 05 June 2025
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Russia to repair warplanes damaged by Ukraine’s drones

  • Ukrainian strikes targeted airfields in Siberia and the far north where Russia houses heavy bombers that form part of its strategic nuclear forces
  • Commercial satellite images showed what appeared to be damaged Russian Tu-95 strategic bombers and Tu-22 Backfire long-range bombers

MOSCOW: Russian warplanes were damaged but not destroyed in a June 1 attack by Ukraine, and they will be restored, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.

Ukrainian strikes targeted airfields in Siberia and the far north where Russia houses heavy bombers that form part of its strategic nuclear forces.

The United States assesses that up to 20 warplanes were hit and around 10 were destroyed, two US officials said, a figure that is about half the number estimated by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

But Ryabkov, who oversees arms control diplomacy, told state news agency TASS: “The equipment in question, as was also stated by representatives of the Ministry of Defense, was not destroyed but damaged. It will be restored.”

It was not immediately clear how swiftly Russia could repair or replace the damaged aircraft – if at all – given the complexity of the technology, the age of some of the Soviet-era planes, and Western sanctions that restrict Russian imports of sensitive components.

Commercial satellite imagery taken after the Ukrainian drone attack shows what experts said appear to be damaged Russian Tu-95 strategic bombers and Tu-22 Backfire long-range bombers that Russia has used to launch missile strikes against Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told US President Donald Trump in a telephone conversation on Wednesday that Moscow would have to respond to the attacks, Trump said.

Russia has an estimated fleet of 67 strategic bombers, including 52 Tu-95s, known as Bear-H by NATO, and 15 Tu-160s, known as Blackjacks, of which about 58 are thought to be deployed, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

In addition, it has 289 non-strategic fighters and bombers, including Tu-22s, Su-24s, Su-34s and MiG-31s, according to the Bulletin. Russia has given no detail about which aircraft were damaged but said that Ukraine targeted five air bases.


Philippines, US hold joint maritime drills for seventh time

Updated 05 June 2025
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Philippines, US hold joint maritime drills for seventh time

  • The exercises included joint operations near shorelines as well as fire support
  • The joint sail also showcased the Philippine vessel Miguel Malvar, a 118-meter guided missile frigate commissioned last month

MANILA: The Philippines and United States militaries have sailed together in the South China Sea for a seventh time to boost interoperability between the two sides, Manila’s armed forces said on Thursday.
The exercises, held on Wednesday in waters off the provinces of Occidental Mindoro and Zambales and away from contested features, included joint operations near shorelines as well as fire support.
“The MCA (maritime cooperative activity) is a demonstration of both nations’ resolve to deepen cooperation and enhance interoperability in line with international law,” the Philippine armed forces said in a statement.
The joint sail also showcased the Philippine vessel Miguel Malvar, a 118-meter guided missile frigate commissioned last month. It is one of two corvettes built by South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries under the Philippines’ military modernization program.
Military engagements between the treaty allies have soared under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who has pivoted closer to Washington in response to China’s growing presence in the South China Sea.
China claims sovereignty over nearly all the South China Sea, including parts of the exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.