60 years ago, on 17 October 1961, the Parisian police threw Algerians into the Seine.
Dozens of men and women who were demonstrating against a discriminatory curfew targeting Algerians were massacred.
This event has to be understood as part of a bigger story 1/
Algerians had long migrated to France in large numbers since the 1920s. Colonial methods of repression followed them in their migration. Special police services tracked them, often made up of officers with experience in North Africa. 2/ muse.jhu.edu/book/60103
Algerian workers in France were often politically active. During the independence war (1954-1962), many of them were involved in the struggle. Different Algerian movement fought each other and different French targets. 3/
In the midst of this violence, in October 1961, the government instituted a curfew ONLY for Algerians. In protest at this discrimination, they organised a protest. Under the orders of Maurice Papon, head of the Paris police, officers brutally repressed the demonstration. 4/
It is partly because of Papon that the massacre is famous. At the time, it was censored, and there was not much discussion of it. But it re-emerged in the 1990s. Before Paris in 1961, Papon had coordinated the massacre of hundreds of Jews in the Southwest of France in 1942-44 5/
In 1995, Papon was put on trial for his involvement in the Holocaust. Activists pointed out that he was not being prosecuted for killing Algerians less than twenty years later, spurring more discussion of the October 1961 massacre 6/
The massacre has rightly attracted attention bc it happened in the heart of Paris. But it is the most famous event in a much wider chain. Many more Algerians were killed far away from this attention. As préfet of Constantine from 1956-8, Papon also supervised their repression 7/
Others would be killed by the Paris police after the independence of Algeria in 1962. Independence did not stop Algerians from coming to France, and it did not stop discriminatory police measures against them. 8/
The massacre of 17 October 1961 is a window into a particular history of the French state, one which connects different forms of violence in Europe and North Africa, colonial and non-colonial, across multiple regimes. 9/
On a personal level, one of my first 'political' memories was when Papon was on trial in 1997. He asked for clemency for his old age.
As we were watching the TV, my mom said icily, 'well he didn't spare the elderly when he shipped us on trains to be killed'
ps: there is an essay about this, and the difficulties of learning how to connect different forms of racial violence, that I have written in my mind for a very long time. commission me <3
Many DMs asking for reading:
the best book is by two British historians, Jim House and Neil McMaster, “Paris 1961”.
You can also check out @campvolant’s recent “Ici on noya les Algériens” …
For novels, there is an interesting novel by William Gardner Smith, The Stone Face, recently republished by @adamshatz (which I have yet to write about 😬)
and a more recent one by Leila Sebbar, La Seine était rouge
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So I was in the archives minding my business, when I found the most insane box:
a STASH of LOVE LETTERS between Spanish women and Moroccan men from the 1940s seized by colonial authorities for having ILLEGAL RELATIONSHIPS
follow me!! 🇪🇸🇲🇦💄💃
María was a tango dancer in cabarets in Seville. She wrote passionate letters to her lover in Tetuán, the capital of the Spanish protectorate in Morocco. But the letters he wrote back were all seized, and their plans to get married, foiled by authorities
Sp authorities in Morocco kept an extremely meticulous surveillance of these relationships: there are hundreds of files lying in the Spanish state archives.
Like most women in her situation, María was banned from entering Morocco, and her lover was banned from entering Spain
All day I've felt nauseous thinking about the attack against the Ghriba synagogue in Djerba.
Every time we're murdered, while we're shopping for food or praying, I think we've reached the lowest point.
Every time I'm proved wrong: nobody wants North African Jews to live /
We are blamed for leaving, we are blamed for staying. We get killed in Paris, we get killed in Djerba. We get blamed for selling ourselves to the West and assimilating, we get called stupid for trying to keep our communities and traditions. /
Nobody loves us alive. Zionism kills us, nationalism kills us, and a pack of vultures circle around our dead bodies to make us symbols of a long-gone happy time of coexistence that can only be celebrated because we are dead. /
A thread on the EU’s only South American border 🇧🇷🇫🇷 🧵
Guyane is one of the overseas départements of France - it’s a full part of French Republic and EU. But it is the only such département that is not on an island and thus has a substantial land border with Brazil and Suriname.
Most of this border (730km) runs through the thick Amazonian forest. Guyane has very low population density and so do the neighbouring regions of Brazil, though the state of Amapá is nearly twice as populated as Guyane
Headlines in France have been dominated by events in Mayotte, a small island in the Indian Ocean, where a huge police operation is taking place.
Why is Mayotte so important for Fr politics? Why is it part of the EU? & why do most migrant deportations in France occur there? 🧵👇🏼
Let’s start off with a brief summary of what’s going on, which isn’t much covered in English:
the French minister of interior, Gérald Darmanin has announced a police operation called “Wuambushu” (‘taking back’ in shimaoré) on the island 2/
Large amounts of police forces (1800 people!) have been sent from Metropolitan France in order to bulldoze shantytowns and deport mass number of immigrants so as to ‘reestablish’ law and order on the island 3/
(Photo: Le Monde)
going back further, @BentIfriqiya looks at the legacy of Bourguiba and the immediate post-independence years of the 1950s-80s in shaping racism in Tunisia
I want to tell you a story of how radio can change people’s lives. It’s about a show in Gibraltar run by this woman, Norma Delgado
(photo credit: Gerry Martinez)
From 1969 to 1982, Gibraltar’s border with Spain was closed for political reasons. There was no way out of the territory by land, and many people had family stuck on the other side.
Franco even shut down the phone lines! So you could not hear your loved one’s voices. Except…
… except if you tuned into Radio Gibraltar, and to Norma’s program, “Recordándote: un programa de discos dedicados”.
Norma would read out messages from family members who dedicated songs to those on the other side, serving as a vital emotional link across the border