#bc. at 14 your teacher has to teach about one exemple of decolonisation (pick between algeria or india)

[leonardburton]

[image description: tags reading "i was taught in school that all the archives were made public, should find the source" / end ID]

Just got an ask from someone who wants to stay anonymous asking me why Algeria doesn’t sue and ask for reparation.

It’s simply because France made it impossible. Basically whenever there was a massacre France would burn or hide the proof especially the registers of births and deaths. When they left they also took a lot of archives and they refuse to give us access to those archives. The law actually says that archives must be made fully public after 50 years. Well guess what? The majority of the archives related to Algeria are still not public and its been 61 years. At first they promised to make them public. Then they said they had to check each page before making it public in case there some stuff that should stay classified. Then they decided that if in a box there’s just one single page that says “classified” then no page from said box can be made public. All of that for one simple reason. France voted a law giving a full amnesty for the colonial crimes committed by the French in Algeria. That law means that nobody can be judged for anything they did to Algerians during the war (let alone before the war). The only way for that law to be considered illegal is if the colonial crimes committed by France in Algeria are officially labeled as a crime against humanity. Because amnesty is not valid for a crime against humanity. That’s why they hide the archives because they prove that there was indeed a crime against humanity and that would force France to pay back for what they did.

Basically imagine there’s a murderer and everyone knows he did it he says that he did it but you still need the evidence for the trial… except the murderer has the evidence everyone knows he has them he says he has them but he can choose which one he keeps and which one he shows… France is the murderer in this scenario.

P.S: I talk about Algeria because I’m Algerian and because the situation was very specific but France should pay for ALL its colonial crimes (settler colonialism is very different because it’s a form of colonialism that doesn’t see indigenous people as merchandise or cheap labor they are seen as a threat something to be eradicated)