The French government is to pay reparations to thousands more Algerians and their families held in internment camps in France after the north African country’s war of independence.
Acting on a report by an independent commission, the government agreed to increase the number of Harkis and their relatives eligible to claim compensation for being forced to live in deplorable and squalid living conditions several decades ago.
Up to 200,000 Algerians were recruited to fight alongside French colonial forces or as “auxiliaries” in the war for independence between 1954 and 1962. The word Harki comes from the Arabic for “movement” and referred to the mobile units in which many of the Algerians served.
Paris had promised to look after them at the end of the conflict but then left them to fend for themselves after independence was signed on 18 March 1962. Many of those trapped in Algeria and branded traitors were massacred in revenge for supporting the country’s former colonial masters.
An estimated 42,000 Harkis and around the same number of relatives who fled to France were held in camps that led to the deaths of dozens of children between 1962 and 1975.
The French government initially refused to recognise their right to stay, forcing them to remain in squalid camps.
France held its firs national day to honour the Harkis in 2001 but it was not until 2016 that the Socialist president, François Hollande, formally recognised the state’s role in abandoning them.
“I recognise the responsibility of French governments in abandoning the Harkis, the massacres of those who remained in Algeria and the inhumane conditions of those transferred to camps in France,” Hollande said at the time.
In 2021, Emmanuel Macron asked for “forgiveness” on behalf of France for leaving the Harkis and their families to their fate after independence.
In February 2022, the French government recognised the country’s responsibility for “the indignity of the hosting and living conditions on its territory” and the “exclusion, suffering and lasting trauma” that ensued. It passed a law giving reparations to those who had lived in 89 internment camps of up to €3,000 (£2,600) for those held for a year and an extra €1,000 for every subsequent year.
At the time, about 50,000 Harkis were expected to be eligible for reparations at a total cost of €310m.
However, a report by the national independent commission for the recognition and reparation of prejudices suffered by the Harkis (CNIH) identified 45 new sites, including “military camps, slums, transit shacks”, where up to 14,000 Harkis and their families were forced to live.
The decision to enlarge the possibility for Harkis and their relatives to claim compensation came after the CNIH report was submitted to the French prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, on Monday evening.
Patricia Mirallès, the secretary of state for veterans’ affairs and memory, said the decision would go some way to “make amends for a new injustice, including in regions where until now the suffering of the Harkis living there were not recognised”.
The behaviour of France during and after the war for Algerian independence is just one of the legacies of the country’s colonial legacy that remains unresolved. These include nuclear testing in the Pacific area of French Polynesia and its role in the Rwandan genocide.
