I am sorry,
please forgive me,
Thank you,
I love you.
Disclaimer: This is going to be a very long answer.
I’ll try to make an unexhaustive list of France’s Hall of Shame.
Those are not necessarily secrets, but it’s mostly History facts that are hardly mentioned here.
Nonetheless, I don’t have superior knowledge so it’s very much likely that a lot of events who deserve to be on this list won’t be mentioned.
Also the informations I’m giving here might be incorrect or incomplete. Don’t hesitate to point out potential errors in the comments.
Everytime I’ll add an asterisk, it will be to specify that this event was spoken about when I was in school.
It doesn’t mean all French schools did the exact same telling, but it can give an idea of our own awareness of those pages of French History.
- I think it’s now an established fact for everybody that France was one of the instigators of the infamous Triangular Trade and had quite a big history of slavery.
In 1685, the Kingdom of France edicted the Code Noir.
It was a decree made to create a legislation about slave ownership.
Even though, we have a good idea nowadays of how slavery was one the cruellest and darkest chapter of the west, this text still has a few bitter surprises.
For example, according to its Article 13, that a child of a female slave, will become slave in his/her turn, even though the father might be free.
And of course, slave owners had every right to sentence to death a slave if he attempted to hurt them or… if they just gathered with other slaves.
The biggest point of this decree is that at no moment slaves are considered as humans or even animals: they’re considered as objects, or goods to be precise.
We have no estimations as of today of how many lives were impacted by this in France. Some Historians enumerated the number of Africans deported from their continent in the triangular trade as roughly 11 Millions.
France formally recognized Slavery as a Crime against Humanity in 2001.
- Haiti’s independence debt:
20 years after their independence made at the price of 200 000 Haitians lives, President Boyer was threatened by the Kingdom of France to pay a debt so that the Kingdom of France formally recognize their independence.
That debt amounted to 150 Millions of Francs, ultimately reduced to 90 Millions which would make today 21 Billions of Dollars, which Haiti finished to pay in 1947.
In 2004, the Haitian government formally asked France to repay back the debt as it was a “grave injustice” which is amongst the reasons Haiti didn’t develop as fast as it should have.
In 2015, while in visit in the country, Francois Hollande pledged to write off their debt to Haiti, which sparked applauds from the Hatian crowds, as it was interpreted as the repayment of the Independence Debt.
Later on, Hollande clarified his statement, and he specified that it was actually the unrelated 77 Millions of Dollars, Haiti owe to France in external debt that were written off, not the Independence debt.
Hollande added that France couldn’t repay such an amount, but would invest in Haitian business.
Pictured here: French President Francois Hollande, with Haitian President Michel Martelly.
- In 1830, under the impulse of King Charles X, France led a war of conquest in Algeria.* It lasted almost 30 years and cost, according to Ben Kiernan, the lives of roughly 820 000 lives. This latter equated the war to a genocide.
One of the Lieutenant present in Algeria during the conquest, Lucien de Montagnac wrote to a friend in 1843:
All populations who do not accept our conditions must be despoiled. Everything must be seized, devastated, without age or sex distinction: grass must not grow any more where the French army has set foot. Who wants the end wants the means, whatever may say our philanthropists. I personally warn all good soldiers whom I have the honour to lead that if they happen to bring me a living Arab, they will receive a beating with the flat of the saber.... This is how, my dear friend, we must make war against Arabs: kill all men over the age of fifteen, take all their women and children, load them onto naval vessels, send them to the Marquesas Islands or elsewhere. In one word, annihilate all who will not crawl beneath our feet like dogs
For the next decades, France will enforce a systeme of apartheid in Algeria, segregating the Muslims citizens.
“La prise de Constantine” by Horace Vernet 1837
- AGAIN pretexting another missionary killed, France invaded this time what was called Cochinchina. After two more wars, one with China and another with Siam, all those provinces captured by France ended up being united under the name of Indochina*.
On top of colonizing the country, France was as well selling opium in large quantities. During French rule, 80% of Indochina population was illiterate.
La Prise de Saigon, by Antoine Morel-Fatio, 1859
- Surprisingly enough in retrospect, the French Left Wing was pro-colonial.
At the time, it was only the right and especially the far-right who were anti-colonial, but they weren’t motivated by any noble sentiment: they just thought expanding colonies were a diversion against where France should actually expand, Germany.
Jules Ferry, one of the most proeminent figures of the French left-wing in the 19th century is quoted to have declared:
“Gentlemen, there’s a second point, a second set of ideas that I have to mention (…): it is the humanitarian and civilizing side of the question. (…) Gentlemen, we need to speaker higher and more right! One needs to say overtly that indeed superior races have a right towards inferior races (…). I repeat that there are for superior races a right, because there’s a duty for them. They have the duty to civilize inferior races (…). Those duties were oftenly little known in history of past centuries, and certainly when Spanish soldiers and explorers introduced slavery in Central America, they didn’t accomplished their duty of men of a superior race. But nowadays, I support that European nations carry out with greatness and honesty of this superior duty of civilization.”
Even intellectuals such as Victor Hugo agreed with Ferry at the time.
The declaration in itself tells nothing new about the French History of Racism, with racial hierarchies already in place in all colonies.
But it’s the first time in France, that colonialism would find a political “moral justification”.
It will lead further years after to the Code de l’Indigénat (Code of the indiginate).
As Ferry was also the one to make public schools in France free and mandatory; a lot of schools still carry his name to this day.
Portrait of Jules Ferry
- In the Nazi occupied part of France during the Second World War, many French collaborated with the Nazis to inform on Jews. You could even found at the time French citizens working at the Dept D of the Gestapo in France.
This all culminated in the infamous Vel d’Hiv Roundup*, where French police helped the Nazis to mass arrest more than 13 000 Jews to have them deported to Auchwitz.
Arrested Jews gathered at the Velodrome d’Hiver (Vel d’Hiv), 16th of July 1942
It has also to be noted that in the meantime, Vichy France promulgated anti-semtitic laws* banning Jews from any state related position, and were victims of spoliation.
Pétain also worked hands in hands with the Nazis to have emprisoned Jews being sent to death camps in Germany.
Emmanuel Macron in 2017 recognized French State’s responsibility in the Holocaust.
- A quite small but obscure fact for most of us in France, the last SS Division to have defended Hitler’s bunker before it fell to Soviet forces, was a division consisting of… French volunteers.
33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne (1st French) - Wikipedia
- Once France was liberated, it went through a period of Purge*.
It led to an explosion of accusations of collaboration with the Nazis or Pétain.
Some were justified but a lot were done on dubious bases, probably by people who wanted to take advantage of the killing frenzy.
Some 11 000 people were sentenced to death officially by the Free French government. Other people were killed by resistants carrying out extra judicial executions.
Also any woman who was accused of “sleeping with the enemy” or having collaborated in any way, were forced to get an induction cut by the crowds.
It left traumatisms akin to a rape according to sociologists, and the vast majority of them just plunged into depression.
French woman getting her hair shaved, 1944.
- At the end of the Second World War, 400 000 soldiers coming from French colonies engaged during the liberation of France*.
While all of them were granted full French citizenship (as colonized people were considered French “subjects” but not citizens), they received poor pensions compared to their white French counterparts.
This led to a mutinity and the Thiaroye Massacre where 1300 “tirailleurs Sénégalais” were involved. Around thirty got killed.
Thiaroye massacre - Wikipedia
During the victory parades of the end of the Second World War, De Gaulle gave the order to remove the Army of Africa soldiers out of the contigent, probably in order to “whiten” Free French forces.
After the independence of her colonies, France stopped distributing pensions to the ex soldiers who contributed to liberate the country in 1944.
It resumed back in 2006, thanks to the film “Indigènes” (Days of Glory in English), but without paying back the missing 40 years of pensions.
“Tirailleurs Sénégalais” during the liberation of France 1944.
- Quickly after the Second World War, Ho Chi Minh seized the opportunity to declare Vietnam’s independence, thus spurring the First Indochina War*.
Despite the war being widly unpopular amongst the French people who were keen on giving independence to Indochina, the French government realizing they would lose their most lucrative colony, fought for more than 7 years.
Viet-Minhs were routinely tortured, and it took more than 400 000 lives for Vietnam to access independence.
Also this war marked the first use military use of napalm, used by the French side.
French soldiers attacking during the First Indochina War.
- It is also to be noted that just before the end of the war, France wanted to bomb the Viet Minh with 3 American Nuclear warheads.
It was called Operation Vulture, and Eisenhower was actually tempted to go with the plan, until Britain opposed it.
Operation Vulture - Wikipedia - In 1947, conflict arose between the French forces and nationalists in Madagascar, a French posession at the time.
It escalated to the Malagasy Uprising.
The French retaliated by using every cruel action they could do: torture, war rape, mass executions, torching villages or even throwing live prisoners out of an airplane.
Casualties estimates go between 11 000 to 100 000 Malagasy lives.
This insurrection and the massacre done in response, were kept secret to the French people by their own government.
In 1995, Jacques Chirac in visit in Madagascar called the French doings of this event “unacceptable”.
Still when Omer Beriziky tried to request declassification of French documents of the Malagasy Uprising in 2012, the permission was denied.
A village in Madagascar torched by the French military.
- The 8th of May 1945, Victory day for the Allies, crowds in Setif, Algeria, were celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany. Some chanted “Death to facism and colonialism” or “We want to be your equals”.
Despite the strict interdiction given by French authorities, Bouzid Saal a young “indigène” waved the Algerian flag in sign of protest, before being shot by a French policeman.
Algerian crowds then turned on the Europeans who were there, in what would become the Sétif & Guelma Massacres*.
While a little less than 100 Europeans were killed during those events, the French sent the army to retaliate.
Mass arrests and summary executions ended up with around 6000 casualties on the Algerian side.
Those massacres became the trigger of the creation of the FLN (Front de Libération National /National Liberation Front) in Algeria with the aim of reaching independence by armed combat.
This spurred in 1954, the Algerian War of Independence*, which lasted almost 8 years.
300 000 Algerians were killed in that war. FLN members captured were tortured, even when it was useless.
Rape was not unusual on women who were suspected to be affiliated to the FLN.
Although public opinion in 1954 in France was against an independence of Algeria, it slowly became unpopular the more news of torture and war crimes were reported.
Effects of the conflicts spreaded into metropolitan France as well, with protesters against French rule in Algeria being severely repressed, leading to the Massacre of 1961*:
Paris massacre of 1961 - Wikipedia
The war ended up in 1962 with the Evian accords.
The French government offered no formal apologies, nor reparation to the Algerian one.
Emmanuel Macron the closest in doing so, just declared in Algiers “Colonisation is a crime against humanity”.
Macron reconnaît à nouveau les «crimes» de la colonisation
He also opened up pensions rights for all victims of the war: Guerre d'Algérie: le droit à des pensions reconnu aux victimes non françaises
It should also be noted that of all the events I’m mentioning here, this one is by far the most well known and documented in France.
Algerian members of FLN killed by French forces, circa 1954.
- Realizing that the diplomatic ways couldn’t work, the UPC (Union of the Peoples of Cameroon) similary to the FLN, also tried to get independence for Cameroon by force of arms. This led to a Cameroonese Guerrilla War of Independence between 1955 and 1962, where French soldiers launched attacks against Independentists and tortured those captured.
The death toll on the Cameroonese side goes from 20 000 to 120 000 casualties.
Cameroun 1955-1962 : la guerre cachée de la France en Afrique
This war wasn’t reported in France in any way.
When the president Ahidjo was elected, he was quickly accused by the UPC to be a puppet for French interests.
Felix-Roland Moumié one of the leaders of the UPC ended up assassinated by the French secret services in 1960.
UPC leaders including Felix-Roland Moumié, circa 1957.
- After the fallout of Algerian War of Independence, all France colonies were asked through referendums if they wanted to remain part of France.
Djibouti voted “remain” once in 1960 and another time in 1967, but on both occasions, there were suspicions that the votes were rigged by the French.
Ultimately in 1976 a third and last referendum occured during which a whopping 98% of Djiboutians voted “leave”.
This makes Djibouti the last official colony to have declared Independence.
Illustration of Independence Day in Djibouti.
- Until the 1967, France was Israel main ally. It changed the day Egypt under the impulse of Nasser with Jordan and Syria planned an invasion of Israel after an escalation in tensions.
France who was trying to recover ties in the Arab world after the Algerian War of Independence tried to appease the tensions and diplomatically reconcile all the parties involved.
Israel opposed that thinking and geared up for a full on war. France in retaliation officially embargoed any shipment of arms and ammo, while unofficially a few boats ended up unloading in Israel anyway.
When Israel launched a pre emptive strike on Egyptian forces in what would become the Six days War, France stopped backing up Israel and condemn the attack.
De Gaulle then bitterly described Israelis as an “elite people, sure of itself and dominating” making it the most anti semitic declaration by a French head of state since Pétain.
Weirdly enough, David Ben Gurion would still attend De Gaulle’s funerals three years later in 1970.
David Ben Gurion and Charles De Gaulle in 1960.
- In 1960, when Gabon reached independence, France understood that they would lose a huge oil reserve there. French officials under the impulse of Jacques Foccart, the father of the infamous “Françafrique” policy, befriended the president Leon M’Ba and made him signed a Mutual Defense Agreement.
But one of the clause of the agreement was that France would have the priority over anybody else to exploit Gabon’s ressources… including Gabon itself.
Leon M’Ba with the French government assistance, changed Gabon’s consitution to have the “pro France” Omar Bongo to succeed him, without any elections involved.
Gabon is now considered as a country with one of the highest infant mortality rate in the world and coincidently one of the highest rate of corruption.
Portrait of Omar Bongo.
- Under the presidence of Ahmed Sékou Touré, Guinea tried to stay away from relations with France and get closer to the Warsaw Pact.
French secret services, with the blessing of the US, tried to destitute Touré by bringing chaos in Guinea. They tried this by two ways: dumping lots of counterfeited Guinean Francs to crash down the economy and giving weapons to his opponents. Ultimately both plans failed, and Touré remained in power.
Portrait of Ahmed Sékou Touré in 1982.
- In 1967, the region of Biafra tried to leave Federal Republic of Nigeria, resulting in the Republic of Biafra.
Elf, a French oil-multinational got interested in the conflict, as the Biafra was Nigerian’s most oil filled region of the country.
Not only did they fund secessionists but they also pushed the French secret services to give them support and assistance.
The conflict lasted 3 years, with a death toll of roughly 1 Million of Nigerians and infant starvations; probably the most nightmarish photos I have ever seen.
Children in Biafra, 1968.
- In 1977, French mercenary Bob Denard with his men, supported by the French government, tried to make a coup d’état against Mathieu Kérékou, the Marxist president of Benin. The operation called “operation Crevette” ultimately failed as Denard did not expect the reinforcement of Beninese troops with North Korean soldiers.
Denard ended up being exfiltrated out of Benin.
Portrait of Kérékou.
- In 1966, Jean-Bedel Bokassa got elected at Centrafrican presidence.
Bokassa, a man who tortured and violently repressed opponents , had close relations with France, and in 1972 declared himself “President for life”.
But this wasn’t enough for him as in 1974 he declares himself Marechal, before declaring himself Emperor in 1977, in a ceremony that copied in many ways the one when Napoleon got to the throne.
However the emperor was turning more and more to the attention of Muammar Gaddafi in Lybia, who was in dispute with France over Tchad. The French government saw the writing on the wall and launched Operation Caban to overthrow Bokassa’s regime, while the latter was in visit in Lybia.
Bokassa learned he was destituted from Gadaffi’s palace.
Later on, French newspaper “Le Canard Enchainé” revealed Giscard d’Estaing, the president in function at the time in France, received diamonds from Bokassa, estimated at 1 Million Dollars.
This became the “Affaire Bokassa” which ultimately costed Giscard d’Estaing’s re election in 1981.
Bokassa in his emperor clothing, in 1977.
- In 1960, Pierre Debizet and Jacques Foccart created the SAC “Service d’Action Civique”.
Service d'Action Civique - Wikipedia
The organisation was allegedly created to offer a political support to the government actions; in truth it was a militia who absorbed members of Mafias and other mobsters, to recruit them to do government’s shady doings.
At some point, even ex-Gestapo members were part of the organisation.
The deal was simple: you do missions once in a while handed out by the government and in return you would get a “SAC” card which was litteraly a “get out of jail” card.
Their main targets were workers on strike, protesters or anybody affiliated with communist parties.
One of their leaders would later be found out linked to the abduction of Moroccan political leader of opposition Ben Barka.
Mehdi Ben Barka - Wikipedia
During all the years of service, members of the SAC were incriminated for:
“assault and battery, carrying weapons, scams, firearms assaults, counterfeited printing of money, procuring, racketeering, arson, blackmail, drug trafficking, hold-up, breach of trust, attacks, robbery and receiving of stolen goods, criminal association, vehicle theft”.
Internal conflicts culminated in the “Auriol killings” where Jacques Massié a chief member of the SAC of Marseille was killed by other members of the SAC.
His wife and 7 years old child were also killed.
After the investigation concluded, the SAC was allegedly dissolved by François Mittérand.
Massié’s house, torched down by SAC members.
- In 1980, Vladimir Vetrov, a francophile agent of the KGB, turned on his employers and ended up giving to the French secret services, almost 3000 pages of documents, detailling Russian’s industrial and scientifical espionnage. Codenamed “Farewell”, Vetrov proved to an incredible asset for both French and American governments. Amongst the datas handed out by Vetrov, there was also a list of KGB agents positioned in France.
The French government expelled 47 Russian diplomats, including 8 of them being part of Vetrov’s list.
When the USSR reclaimed an explanation of the expels, Foreign Affairs Chief of Cabinet, Francois Scheer in a rare act of stupidity (or malice?) presented their ambassador with Vetrov’s original list, giving to the Russians the perfect clue to find their mole.
Vetrov ended up captured by the KGB and was shot to death one year later.
Francois Scheer was never investigated or trialed for having, deliberately or not, indirectly exposed his source.
Portrait of Vladimir Vetrov, aka “Farewell”
- For decades, France led nuclear tests in the Mururoa atoll, close to Australia and New Zealand, much to their own contempt.
A Greenpeace boat, the Rainbow Warrior was supposed to sail in the atoll to protest for the Nuclear Tests in 1985.
French secret services planted a bomb inside the boat to sink it, killing one man on board.
The French agents were caught by the New Zealander Police force, revealing to the whole world the “Rainbow Warrior case”.
The French government offered apologies to the NZ one in 1986, and reiterated in 1991, with personal ones coming from French Prime Minister, Michel Rocard.
The Rainbow Warrior ship, before its sinking.
- In 1981, the “Union Calédonienne” the main pro-independence party in New Caledonia had as a general secretary Pierre Declercq. The latter ended up assassinated the 19th September 1981, with his murderer still unknown.
This assassination pushed independentists to the radicalization and spawned the creation of the FLKNS (Front de Libération des Kanaks National et Socialiste /Kanak and National Socialist Liberation Front) who unilateraly declared New Caledonia’s independence.
Lot of members would end up either torching or expelling people of European origins from their houses.
Trying to defuse the situation Chirac offered an independence referendum in 1987.
Thinking that it would satisfy the FLKNS demands, the vote was restricted to people having lived at least 3 years in Caledonia.
The FLKNS thought it was “unsufficient” and wanted to ban people of European origins from the vote, so they appealed to boycott it.
The result ended up with 98% of the votes in favour to remain part of France.
The 22nd of April 1988, indepentists of the FLKNS attacked a Gendarmerie station, killing 4 Gendarmes and taking in hostage 27 of them.
The indepentists then splitted in two groups, one led by Chanel Kapoeri who would release the Gendarmes three years later, after being persuaded by the elders of the village, and another one with 16 hostages who would retreat to a cave in the North of the Island led by Alphonse Dianou and 18 other men.
The event became known as the “Ouvéa hostage crisis”.
A team of 9 men of the GIGN was sent to try to negotiate. The team would end up being held hostage in their turn, with Phillipe Legorjus their captain acting as a mediator.
Legorjus was confident the hostages could have been released without the use of force, especially since the first group ended up releasing their own hostages and he informed Dianou the FLKNS since the discovery of the 4 bodies at the Gendarmerie station and realizing that nobody would follow them in the island for an insurrection, ended up disavowing Dianou’s group actions.
Dianou manifested his will to release the hostages, if he could get away from the cave without any harm done to him or his men.
The French government ignored Legorjus pleas, and gave the greenlight an military attack to the the cave.
Hostages were rescued alive, but their takers were killed in what looked like summary executions.
Dianou got shot in the knee, but no medical help came to him once neutralized, leaving him bleeding to death.
This remained one of the biggest controversy as it remains unclear who’s to blame and who gave orders in this story.
Based on Legorjus testimony of the crisis and assault, Matthieu Kassovitz directed a movie based on the events “L’ordre et la morale”.
This 9th of November, New Caledonia is offered another referendum to vote about their possible independence.
Poster for “L’ordre et la morale” film based on the Ouvéa hostage crisis.
- Thanks to French-Norwegian judge Eva Joly, in 1994, the “Elf case” bursted out. Elf-Aquitaine which was a petroleum company under French government control, was implicated in embezzlement of public funds but also financing “pro France” politicians in Africa, including in Rwanda, Zaire and Congo-Brazzaville.
The case, led to multiple arrests and condemnations, including Elf’s CEO Loïk Le Floch-Prigent.
Elf was 'secret arm of French policy'
Le pétrole congolais d’Elf, huile de la Françafrique
Elf ended up being absorbed in 2000 by Total.
Elf ex-offices in Brazzaville.
- France, as the United States, also supported from 1965 to 1997, Mobutu for the presidency of the Zaire.
Mobutu was a dictator who rigged elections and made regular public executions.
His regime was a perfect example of kleptocracy, during which he amassed the whoping fortune of 5 Billion of Dollars at the expense of his own people, making Zaire at the time one of the poorest countries of the world.
France gave military support to Mobutu’s regime during the two Shaba wars, supplying him with weapons and troops.
Ugandan, Rwandan and Burundian forces ultimately overthrown Mobutu and turned Zaire into the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Portrait of Mobutu, 1983
- From 1990 to 1994, some parts of French government actively supported Juvénal Habyarimana, president of the Hutu led regime in Rwanda.
Habyarimana was provided with French guns and ammo, as the French government saw the RPF was an attempt to turn a francophone country into a anglophone one, turning on a blind eye on the four decades of persecutions the “tutsis” endured.
During the “Rwandan genocide”, France led two operations Amaryllis and Zone Turquoise.
Both officially aimed to evacuate expatriates out of Rwanda and to create humanitarian areas for refugees or displaced persons.
In truth, those operations most likely helped the genocidaires to escape the country.
Between 500 000 and 1 Millions of Rwandans died.
Emmanuel Macron declared he would declassify French archives for Paul Kagame’s government early this year.
No apologies, nor reparations have been made so far.
For more on that topic, I invite you to read Didier Champion ‘s exhaustive answer.
Didier Champion's answer to How and why did the French government assist and abet the Rwandan genocide of 1994? How have they atoned for their crimes?
Nyanza Genocide Memorial Site, in Kigali, Rwanda.
- It’s a quick entry, but important nonetheless.
France with Germany were the two countries who lobbyed for the use of air strikes in the Kosovo War, and not a contigent of armed troops, leading to the infamous NATO bombings in Yugoslavia.
Bombings in Belgrade, Serbia, 1999.
- It has been revealed in 2012, that Gadaffi had fund Sarkozy’s campaign for presidency in 2007.
It is quoted as one of the reasons France engaged in the Lybian Civil War and bombed particulary Tripoli, being the country of NATO launching the most air strikes.
One could assume Sarkozy was trying to silence Gadaffi the hard way and burn evidence of his fundings.
Sarkozy is currently indicted by French justice.
Bombing in Tripoli, Lybia, 2011.
- In 2011, Laurent Gbagbo accused the French government to have plotted to ousted him out of the President office during the Ivorian Crisis of 2010–2011.
Alassane Ouatarra, his successor, became really close to France in international relations.
The Ivorian crisis led to the death of more than 1500 Ivorians, most of them being civillians.
Hollande president of France, with Ouatarra president of the Ivory Coast, 2015
- Last but not least, the infamous Franc CFA which became the very symbol of the “Françafrique” policy.
The Franc CFA is a relicate still alive and kicking of French colonial empire.
It was created as Franc of French Colonized Africa, but became changed his name to Franc of the Financial Community of Africa, now indexed to the Euro.
50% of Franc CFA reserves are stored in the French state treasury and the amongst the 15 countries using it, 13 are considered impoverished and indebted by the IMF.
All 15 countries part of the Franc CFA have strictly no power over the control of the Franc CFA currency.
In 2015, Tchad president Idriss Déby called for the end of the Franc CFA.
Idriss Déby appelle les pays africains à se débarrasser du Franc CFA - Afrik.com
A 5000 Francs CFA note.
Writing this list comes with a feeling of profound disgust. Growing up in France, you don’t realize what your country has done and is doing to dominate other peoples, with all the cruellest means available.
It is crystal clear, that internet has a pivotal role in the learning of all those elements.
If I only counted on French mainstream media, or worse, the French government, I would know probably less than one third of this list, and definitely not the Francafrique chapters.
Those are the darkest parts of the past and present of my country.
French History wasn’t only evil, there were heroic, and humanitarian moments.
It needs also to be said, that there are lot of people who worked and are working hard to reveal the truths on our Government’s shady doings, such as Mediapart or Le Canard Enchainé.
But that is still the trail of blood France left behind.
And while I think apologies and reparations should be made, those won’t save us from the fallout of decades of persecutions done on foreign people, with entire generations of people now waiting for the day they could avenge their relatives and ancestors of the French hand that oppressed them.
No words, no money can temper such an anger.
EDIT 07/08/2018: After reading some comments, and even having received an edit suggestion that was actually a criticism in disguise, it appears important for me to clarify the following points:
- This answer is not motivated by French bashing. Most of those who follow me, must know by now that I spent a lot of time deconstructing stereotypes and wrong assumptions about the French.
I just believe it is important to know some of those unsung chapters of History. - This answer is by no means, intended to provide fuel to French-haters.
France is not a homogenous block, and has multiple faces including this one, but also many others.
I do not encourage to essentialize France based on those facts, as I would never essentialize a community based on the crimes done by many of their members (basically throw in any minority you can think of). - I also make a great point, that if those actions were done by the government, it doesn’t mean they were supported by the French people, especially for those post 1945.
I’m actually pretty sure, if those actions needed a referendum before being done, most of them wouldn’t even had any tiny greenlight. - Also, I acknowledge that on some of those facts, the French were no better than anyone else.
My focus on this answer was on France’s doings, but for example, our slavery trade was nothing compared to the Arab one which lasted for centuries.
Or that most of the Françafrique operations were given US blessings until 1991, as France was considered the country to keep west Africa in check to “not turn red”.
There are indeed contexts to all those elements, that can help to understand those actions.
I did not elaborate on those, as again, for me the question’s topic wasn’t about that.
And it doesn’t make IMO those doings more right. - Nonetheless, I’ll make in the following days on another question, a list of the rightest doings of France (SPOILER: yes there are some) which will not only balance out this (heavy) answer, but will also be an opportunity to talk about my personal French hero, a politician unfairly unknown compared to De Gaulle or Napoleon.
- To conclude, while I do think it is important to acknowledge our past (and present) to move forward, I also do not think the children should pay for the sins of the father.
Yes, I realize my country has done a lot of sh*t, but… I don’t feel responsible for this.
Because I’m not, and actually as I mentioned earlier, very few people were.
And it’s not because the name of the country on my passport is associated with crimes against humanity or war crimes, that I should be trialed on that premise.
As I don’t blame the first German I see for the Nazis, despite my father’s family being traumatized to have lived close to Klaus Barbie’s torture factory.
Germans have nothing to be ashamed of, especially considering they made a public work of apologies.
We have to impose to our governement that it does his own.
But we are not responsible.
The only responsibility we have now is to ensure that none of that would happen again.
No comments:
Post a Comment