French President Emmanuel Macron said he would not “beg forgiveness” from Algeria for the colonization, but hoped to continue working on reconciliation with his colleague Abdelmajid Tebbun.
“It’s not my place to ask for forgiveness, that’s not what it’s about, that word will cut all our ties,” he said in an interview with Le Point magazine published late Wednesday night.
“The worst thing would be to decide: “We apologize and everyone will go their own way,” Macron said.
“Working on memory and history is not a settling of scores,” he added.
But in the interview, he also expressed his hope that Tebbun “can come to France in 2023”, bring back Macron’s trip to Algiers last year and continue their “unprecedented work of friendship.”
The century-old French colonization of Algeria and the bitter war of independence of 1954-1962 left deep scars on both sides, which Macron pushed and calmed in his political career.
In 2017, then-presidential candidate Macron called the French occupation a “crime against humanity”.
A report he commissioned from historian Benjamin Stohr recommended further steps in 2020 to reconcile the two countries, while barring “repentance” and “apologies.”
Macron also questioned whether Algeria existed as a nation before it was colonized by France, prompting an angry reaction from Algeria.
“These moments of tension teach us,” Macron said in an interview with Algerian writer Kamel Daoud.
“You should be able to reach out and fight again, which President Tebbun and I were able to do,” he added.
He supported Tebbon’s proposal to visit the graves of the 19th-century Algerian anti-colonial hero Abdelkader and his entourage buried at Amboise in central France.
“It would make sense for the history of the Algerian people. For the French, this would be an opportunity to understand realities that are often hidden,” Macron said.
Algeria and France share strong ties through immigration, involvement in the independence conflict and post-war repatriation of French settlers, affecting more than 10 million people living in France today.
