APS : Tuesday, 16 October 2018
ALGIERS-The celebration of the National Immigration Day, which coincides this year with the 57th anniversary if the demonstrations of 17 October 1964, “is an opportunity to pay tribute to the thousands of Algerians who
made great sacrifices throughout history, said Tuesday the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“The celebration of this glorious date is an opportunity to pay tribute to the thousands of Algerians who have forever made sacrifices for the national history, perpetuating the attachment of members of our community abroad to their motherland,” said the ministry in a statement.
Recalling the bravery shown by Algerian emigrants who defied all kinds of prohibitions, the ministry affirmed the later “showed to the colonial authority that they were, like their brothers in Algeria, resolutely committed to the struggle of the entire Algerian people to recover their stripped sovereignty and re-appropriate their national values.”
“By their exceptional courage and unshakable and strong conviction, they opened one of the most glorious chapters of the Algerian people’s resistance to colonial occupation and contributed to strengthening the great credit of the Algerian Revolution,” said the ministry.
According to the same source, the demonstrations of 17 October 1961 “were a political act of great significance and reflected in an indisputable manner the feeling of common destiny expressed by all Algerians wherever they for independence”.
This landmark date is part of the Algerian national movement and “embodies the willingness of an entire people who are committed to the values of freedom, justice and peace, and who reject any form of oppression and humiliation of the colonial occupation.”
The ministry stated that this date remains “a tragedy that trampled underfoot the most elementary rights of Algerians, part of an unbroken series of barbaric measures decided by the executioners of the colonial administration and based on unspeakable violations of international and human rights law.”
“These tragic events, forever rooted in the collective memory of the Algerian people, occurred fifty-seven years ago, when the police forces, under the orders of Prefect Maurice Papon, violently repressed a peaceful demonstration in Paris, organized by the French Federation of the FLN party to denounce the curfew applied arbitrarily and solely to the Algerian community in France,” recalled the ministry.
