Algeria: The Massacre in Paris

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

During their country's War of Independence, Algerian fighters from the FLN also targeted the French mainland, killing police officers in Paris and other cities. In October 1961, French police turned against Algerian demonstrators in the capital who'd been called out onto the streets by the FLN. Dozens were shot, others drowned in the River Seine. For decades, the killings were not officially acknowledged. In 2011, Jannat Jalil heard from one man whose sister died that day.

Photo: Algerian demonstrators under arrest after a rally in Paris in October1961 (AFP/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:24.9	searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. Hello and thank you for downloading the podcast of Witness History from the BBC World Service.
0:41.6	All this week we're hearing stories from Algeria's War of Independence, which ended 60 years ago
0:47.7	this year.
0:48.7	Today, Jeanette Gillil reports on the day the French police turned on Algerian protesters in Paris, killing
0:56.3	many of them.
0:57.3	It's the 17th of October 1961.
1:00.8	Thousands of French Algerians are gathering in Paris to take part in a peaceful protest against the intimidation and violence they have to endure on a daily basis.
1:09.0	Among them is 15 year old Fatima Bader.
1:12.0	Her brother, Jowdy, now in his mid-50s was five at the time.
1:16.0	I remember my sister like my second mother because my sister always with me when I am younger. She is my older sisters.
1:25.3	Take care of me. She wants always help my parents. She takes me every morning to school and I remember my sister always with black long hair.
1:40.0	Young and idealistic, Fatima went to join the protest against a curfew in Paris that had been imposed on French Algerians in response to recent killings of 11 French police officers by the Algerian independence movement, the FLN.
1:52.8	It had been fighting for seven years to end French colonial rule in Algeria,
1:57.2	but it also carried out many attacks in mainland France in which dozens of police officers were killed.
2:03.0	The curfew prompted the FLN to change its tactics.
	...

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