The Algerian President Tebboune: France Had to Totally Respect Algeria and Stop Telling Lies

Sunday, 10 October 2021, Algerian President Abdelmajid tebboune demands total respect from France after the latter’s tightening visa rules for the North African countries and Algerians in particular. Also, the president’s demand came following critical comments from Paris as a former colonial power.

The French President Emmanuel Macron said that  Algeria was ruled by a “political-military system” that had “totally re-written” its history

 For the first time, Tebboune spoke in public and announced that the relation between Algeria and France have often been tense but never had it hit “such a new low as in recent days,” according to The Guardian Website.

 

President Telling Lies

Because of the French President’s remarks, tensions escalated between Algeria and France. According to daily French Le Monde, Emmanuel Macron reported that Algerian history was re-written based on hatred against France.

The French President affirmed implicitly that Algeria had no history, which pushed the Algerian President Abdelmajid Tebboune to speak publicly for the first time where he condemned Macron’s remarks as an “unacceptable insult” to the memory of over 5.63 million martyrs who sacrificed themselves with a valiant resistance against French colonialism, between 1830-1962, as said by the Anadolu Agency. He said that the relations between the two countries have often been strained, but this time things are getting worse.

Tebboune demands “total respect” from France, confirming that no one has the right to doubt Algerian history or to interfere in the country’s internal affairs. As such, the Algerian President accused Emmanuel Macron of lying. He continued to say that no one can deny the French colonial war crimes in Algeria, “ we can’t act like nothing happened and history should not be falsified,” he added, as reported by The Guardian website.

Not only this, Tebboune insisted that the return of the Algerian ambassador to France “is conditional on total respect for the Algerian state.”

 

Never-Ending Memory War

Tensions between France and Algeria have continued to rise Because of Emmanuel Macron ‘s statements on the North African country’s colonial past.

October 7,  2021, The French President met with the descendants of Algerian families at the Elysee Palace who were on France’s side during Algeria’s war of independence, as reported by the French daily Le Monde.

“The building of Algeria as a nation is a phenomenon worth watching. Was there an Algerian nation before French colonization? That is the question,” said Macron, according to the same source.

“There were previous colonizations. I am fascinated to see Turkey’s ability to make people totally forget the role it played in Algeria and the domination it has exercised, and to explain that we are the only colonizers. It’s great. Algerians believe it,” he reportedly added. Actually, on the same occasion, Macron argued that the “real history of Algeria has been re-written, and in doing so, it was not based on truths, “but based on hatred against France.”

The French President said that after Algeria gained independence in 1962, the latter was built on “a memorial rent” maintained by “the politico-military system,” adding the whole problem is presented as France, Anadolu Agency reported.

Macron said he would like “to produce Arabic and Berber publications to counter the "disinformation" and "propaganda" in the Maghreb that is "carried out by the Turks and completely rewrites history.”

In response to that, The Algerian Presidency issued a statement on Saturday, October 9, 2021,  on state television to condemn the French president’s announcements.

The statement said that the numerous colonial crimes committed by France are a genocide against the Algerian people.

It is worth to say that tensions between the two countries have been increasing since France decided recently to slash the number of visas for Algerians, Tunisians and Moroccans.

 

Down the Table

In a bid to soften its terrible colonial past and its war crimes against the Algerian people, The French President Emmanuel Macron claimed that “there was a colonization before the French colonial rule” in Algeria, referring to the Ottoman presence in the country between 1514 and 1830.

Macron is implicitly setting Algeria against Turkey, saying somehow that history is sacred and no one can deny that.

In response to that, Algerian historians say that the Ottoman presence in Algeria came to protect the Algerian coastal cities against Italian and Spanish invasions, and this was demanded by Algerians themselves.

Ammar Mahjoubi, an Algerian imam and preacher, described on his Facebook account the comparison between French colonialism and Ottoman rule as "nonsense."

Actually,  the presence before French colonialism was an Ottoman-Islamic presence, not a Turkish nationalist presence. Indeed, there is nothing in the history of the Ottoman presence in Algeria that is shameful. Macron failed in creating political conflict between Algeria and Turkey.