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Algeria calls on France to reckon with colonial past as BLM rocks globe

As the Black Lives Matter movement demonstrations continue, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has demanded an apology from France for its treatment of Algerians under 132 years of French occupation.

People attend a demonstration in Paris on July 5, 2020 in support of Algeria's Hirak key protest movement as Algeria celebrates today the anniversary of its 1962 independence from France. (Photo by FRANCOIS GUILLOT / AFP) (Photo by FRANCOIS GUILLOT/AFP via Getty Images)
People attend a demonstration in Paris on July 5, 2020 in support of Algeria's Hirak protest movement as Algeria celebrates the anniversary of its 1962 independence from France. — FRANCOIS GUILLOT/AFP via Getty Images

France’s controversial legacy of colonialism has been thrown into the spotlight with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune saying his government is still awaiting an apology from Paris for the treatment of Algerians under 132 years of French occupation, culminating in a bloody eight-year war of independence that claimed some 1.5 million Algerian lives.

France is far from alone in being forced by current events to reckon with its past. The colonial histories of developed countries across much of the first world have come under scrutiny in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement. However, for France and Algeria at least, the scars of the former’s occupation of the latter run painfully close to the surface.

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