French repressive and bloody dictatorship in Algeria

Danilo Antón

One of the contemporary historical episodes of conquest and forced colonization that violated human rights was the one carried out by France in Algeria.
The conquest of Algeria by French imperialism began in 1827 and ended 135 years later, when the Republic of Algeria was established in 1962, and the French armed forces and settlers were forced to withdraw from the country.
The excuse for the beginning of the aggression was an incident of the Dey Hussein of Algiers with the consul of France in 1827. On this occasion France imposed a strict blockade to the port of Algiers. Three years later, in the midst of the decline of the French monarchy, French king Charles X sought to regain his prestige by taking the city of Algiers, This was done in 1830. When the Bourbon dynasty fell in the same year, the new French government decided to continue the occupation and began a large-scale invasion annexing much of the Algerian coastal strip in 1834. On occupied lands the French authorities took possession and redistributed lands used by tribes, religious foundations and villages.

From that moment on there was a great influx of Europeans, mainly peasants or working class origins coming from the south of Italy, Spain and France. The French authorities took possession and redistributed the lands property of various tribes, religious foundations and villages. During the conquest, French troops sacked, raped, desecrated mosques and cemeteries and massacred entire villages, setting the tone for what would have been 135 years of French rule.
The conquest was completed with the suppression of the independent Berber republics of Kabylia in 1857.
Algeria was declared an integral part of French territory and French citizens in Algeria (commonly called pieds noirs) were able to elect deputies to the Assembly in Paris while the Algerians remained second-class citizens without political rights and restricted in their individual freedoms.

The discriminatory authoritarianism of successive French governments continued throughout the rest of the nineteenth century and the first six decades of the twentieth century.
The Algerians rebelled on many occasions. There were many reasons: their property had been confiscated and granted to the French settlers, they had no political rights, their religious rights were limited and their economic situation impoverished and with no future prospects.
Over time the privileged stratum of the pieds noirs became settled. There were more than 1.5 million pieds noirs compared to a total population of about 10 million.
Faced with this situation the rebellion started growing and in the 1950s it became a real war.
The nationalist revolutionaries were organized in the National Liberation Front that carried out systematic actions of armed resistance, especially urban guerrilla, against French rule.
The war became bloody and the French authorities were losing control of the situation until the rebellion began to shake the foundations of the weak and shaky French Fourth Republic (1946-58). The repression against the Algerian population was brutal. Razzias indiscriminate, thousands of arrests, torture and executions were the methods used. While many FLN leaders were killed or arrested, French rule was discredited locally and internationally and forced France to change its policy.
The critical situation led to the establishment of a new republic (Fifth Republic) with Charles de Gaulle as President. After major demonstrations in Algiers and several major cities in favor of independence since the late 1960s and a UN resolution recognizing the right to independence, they led President De Gaulle to open negotiations with the FLN. These concluded with the signing of the Evian Agreements in March 1962. A referendum was held and the French electorate approved the Evian Agreements with 91% of the electorate. Later a second referendum was held in Algeria proper, where independence triumphed with 99.72% of the votes.
For the Algerians, at that moment the nightmare of colonial domination was over and new challenges would begin.