The
Nazi collaborator and Paris Police chief in 1961, Maurice
Papon
"Eyewitness
reports recounted stranglings by
police".
A colleague of mine in Cairo
told me a story a few years ago about a massacre in the
streets of Paris.He was a news service reporter at the time
of the violence in the French capital - Oct. 17, 1961 - and
saw tens of bodies of dead Algerians piled like cordwood in
the center of the city in the wake of what would now be
called a police riot.
But his superiors at the news
agency stopped him from telling the full story then, and
most of the world paid little attention to the thin news
coverage that the massacre did receive. Even now, the events
of that time are not widely known and many people, like
myself, had never heard of them at all.
This year is an apt time to
recall what happened, and not only because this is the 35th
anniversary year of Algerian independence. The continuing
civil war in Algeria and the growing violence and racism in
France, as well as the appalling slaughters taking place
elsewhere in the world, give it a disturbing
currency.
Here's what
happened:
Unarmed Algerian Muslims
demonstrating in central Paris against a discriminatory
curfew were beaten, shot, garotted and even drowned by
police and special troops. Thousands were rounded up and
taken to detention centers around the city and the
prefecture of police, where there were more beatings and
killings.
How many died? No one seems to
know for sure, even now. Probably around 200.
It seems astonishing today,
from this perspective, that such a thing could happen in the
middle of a major Western capital closely covered by the
international media. This was not Kabul, Beijing, Hebron or
some Bosnian backwater, after all, but the City of Light -
Paris.
But the Fifth Republic under
President Charles de Gaulle was in trouble in October 1961.
De Gaulle, who was primarily interested in establishing
France's pre-eminent position in Western Europe and the
world, found himself presiding over domestic chaos. France
was constantly disrupted by strikes and protests by farmers
and workers, as well as by terrorism from opposing
organizations: the Front de Libération Nationale
(FLN), representing the Algerian nationalist independence
movement, and the Organisation Armée Secrète
(OAS), a group of disaffected soldiers, politicians and
others committed to keeping Algeria French. The OAS rightly
perceived that de Gaulle was bound to free France from the
burden of its last major colonial holding, so he could get
on with the business of making France the economic and
political power of his lofty ambition.
Eyewitness reports recounted
stranglings by police.
But the vicious war in Algeria,
marked by bloody atrocities committed on all sides, had been
grinding on for nearly seven years. Terrorist attacks in
Paris and other French cities had claimed dozens of lives of
police, provoking what Interior Minister Roger Frey called
la juste colère - the just anger - of the police.
They vented that anger on the evening of Oct. 17. About
30,000 Muslims - from among some 200,000 Algerians,
ostensibly French citizens, living in and around Paris -
descended upon the boulevards of central Paris from three
different directions. The demonstration of men, women and
children was called by the FLN to protest an 8:30 p.m.
curfew imposed only on Muslims.
The demonstrators were met by
about 7,000 police and members of special Republican
Security companies, armed with heavy truncheons or guns.
They let loose on the demonstrators in, among other places,
Saint Germain-des-Prés, the Opéra, the Place
de la Concorde, the Champs Elysée, around the Place
de l'Étoile and, on the edges of the city, at the
Rond Point de la Defense beyond Neuilly.
My news agency friend counted
at least 30 corpses of demonstrators in several piles
outside his office near the city center, into which he had
pulled some Algerians to get them away from rampaging
police. Another correspondent reported seeing police backing
unarmed Algerians into corners on sidestreets and clubbing
them at will. Later eyewitness reports recounted stranglings
by police and the drowning of Algerians in the Seine, from
which bodies would be recovered downstream for weeks to
come.
Thousands of Algerians were
rounded up and brought to detention centers, where the
violence against them continued. "Drowning by Bullets," a
British TV documentary aired about four years ago, alleges
that scores of Algerians were murdered in full view of
police brass in the courtyard of the central police
headquarters. The prefect of police was Maurice Papon, who
recently was still denying charges that he was responsible
for deporting French Jews to Auschwitz during World War II
while he was part of the Vichy government.
The Official
Version
The full horror of this
inglorious 1961 episode in French history was largely
covered up at the time. Though harrowing personal accounts
did eventually percolate to the surface in the French press,
the newspapers -enfeebled by years of government censorship
and control - for the most part stuck with official figures
that only two and, later, five people had died in the
demonstration. Government-owned French TV showed Algerians
being shipped out of France after the demonstration, but
showed none of the police violence.
Journalists had been warned
away from coverage of the demonstration and were not allowed
near the detention centers.
With few exceptions, the
British and American press stuck to the official story,
including suggestions that the Algerians had opened fire
first. Even the newsman who saw the piles of Algerian
corpses was not allowed to report the story; his bosses
ordered that the bureau reports stick to the official
figures.
Both French and foreign
journalists in Paris seemed tacitly to agree that nothing
should be done to further destabilize the French government
or endanger de Gaulle, who was widely seen as the last, best
hope for navigating France out of its troubles.
The story quickly died, drowned
out by fresher alarums and excursions in Europe and
elsewhere.
And, of course, in the next
year, Algeria would have its independence.
Jacques Vergès, the
controversial French lawyer who represented the FLN during
the war in Algeria, told me in an interview last summer that
the police violence and government and press cover-up in
1961 were not surprising. The political circumstances were
right for it, and the news media usually do what they're
told. Just look at how easy it was to round up and intern
American citizens of Japanese descent after Pearl Harbor, he
observed. If he's right, then the problem for politicians is
to make sure that the conditions for injustice and atrocity
do not conjoin, that there is no probability created for
massacres like the one in Paris in October 1961. And if the
politicians fail, then the problem for journalists and
others is how to resist becoming their
accomplices.
From Washington
Report, March 1997,
pg. 36
© Washington Report,
1997
|
