Lawmakers in Algeria have begun debating a draft law that would criminalise France’s colonisation of the North African country amid a period of tense ties between the two countries, according to the People’s National Assembly.
French colonial rule in Algeria lasted for more than 130 years, which was marked by torture, enforced disappearances, massacres, economic exploitation and marginalisation of the Indigenous Muslim population.
Algeria gained independence from France in 1962, but it came at a high human cost: up to 1.5 million people are believed to have been killed, thousands disappeared and millions displaced.
The draft law, which seeks to criminalise France’s colonial rule in Algeria between 1830 and 1962, was introduced in the People’s National Assembly, Algeria’s lower house of parliament, on Saturday.
The bill will go up for a vote on Wednesday, according to reports.
Public broadcaster AL24 News reported that the draft, which contains five chapters comprising 27 articles, is based on “the principles of international law that affirm peoples’ right to legal redress” and “the achievement of historical justice”.
It aims to “establish responsibility, secure recognition and an apology for crimes of colonialism,” the channel reported.
Introducing the bill, Speaker Ibrahim Boughali said it was not just a legal text, but a “defining milestone in the course of modern Algeria”.
“It also extended to policies of systematic impoverishment, starvation, and exclusion aimed at breaking the will of the Algerian people, erasing their identity, and severing their ties to their … roots,” he said.
Credit: aljazeera.com
