Algeria declares France’s colonial rule a crime in new law

Algeria’s parliament unanimously approved legislation that condemns French colonization of the nation.

As lawmakers voted on the bill on Wednesday, they chanted “Long live Algeria” while wearing scarves emblazoned with the country’s colors while seated in the chamber.

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In a move to stop attempts to throw the issue out, Parliament also formally demanded an apology and reparations from Paris.

The law places historical responsibility at the center of the state’s legal framework, claiming that France is legally responsible for Algeria’s colonial past and the tragedies it caused.

Analysts claim that the law has no legal standing outside of the United States, but its political impact indicates a rupture in Algeria’s relationship with France over colonial memory.

According to the APS state news agency, Algeria’s parliament speaker Ibrahim Boughali said the legislation “sents a clear message, both internally and externally, that the country’s national memory is neither erasable nor negotiable.”

The text lists crimes committed under French colonial rule, including “physical and psychological torture,” “systematic plundering of resources,” and “extrajudicial killings.”

Additionally, it asserts that the Algerian state and people have an inalienable right to receive full and fair compensation for all material and moral damages brought on by French colonization.

“Crime against humanity”

Algeria’s indigenous Muslim population was brutally under French rule from 1830 to 1962, under a system of brutal rule that included torture, repression, massacres, economic exploitation, mass murders, deportations, and marginalization.

Only the independence war of 1954 and 1962 left lasting scars. According to Algeria, 1.5 million people have died already.

President Emmanuel Macron has previously referred to Algeria’s colonization as a “crime against humanity,” but he has consistently refrained from apologizing informally. In 2023, he once more asserted that he had no authority to ask for forgiveness.

Pascal Confavreux, a spokesman for the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, said he would not participate in “political debates taking place in foreign countries.” Confavreux said he would not comment on the parliamentary vote.

The law has no binding effect on France, Hosni Kitouni, a researcher studying colonial history at the University of Exeter, said to the AFP news agency, but he added that “its political and symbolic significance is significant because it represents a rupture in the relationship with France in terms of memory.”

The two nations are at odds with one another over their diplomatic relations. Algeria and France continue to cooperate on immigration, particularly as a result of today’s vote, which is in a conflict of interest.

Since Paris recognized Morocco’s plan for resolving the Western Sahara conflict in July 2024, there have been high tense levels for months. Since 1975, when Spain, the colonial power, left the region, the Western Sahara was the site of an armed rebellion.

Algeria backs the Polisario Front, which rejects Morocco’s proposal for autonomy, and supports the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination in Western Sahara.