The President of the People’s National Assembly (APN), Ibrahim Boughali, stated Saturday that French colonialism in Algeria constitutes a state crime for which Paris bears legal and moral responsibility. Boughali’s remarks came during a plenary session dedicated to the discussion of a proposed law criminalizing colonialism.
The session was attended by members of the government and representatives of revolutionary family organizations. Boughali presented the proposed law on behalf of the heads of parliamentary groups within the APN.
“French colonialism in Algeria was a fully integrated project of uprooting and dispossession,” Boughali asserted, emphasizing that it involved the seizure of land, its distribution to settlers, and the alienation of Algerians in their own homeland, depriving them of its resources.
Boughali added that Algerians were systematically denied the right to a decent life through policies of impoverishment, starvation, and marginalization. These policies, he argued, aimed to break the will of the Algerian people, erase their identity, and sever their connection to their historical and cultural roots.
The colonial project, Boughali noted, extended beyond the confiscation of land and the plundering of resources to include policies of exile, forced displacement, the dispersal of families, and the emptying of villages and hamlets. Algerians were also confined to harsh detention centers and camps, which served as tools for mass control and the disruption of the social and cultural fabric of Algerian society.
Boughali highlighted the massacres and intentional killings that occurred during the colonial era, claiming the lives of millions of innocent people both within Algeria and abroad. He also drew attention to the nuclear tests conducted by France in the Algerian Sahara, the effects of which continue to cause health and environmental damage for successive generations. He described the nuclear testing as a complete crime that cannot be subject to any statute of limitations or forgotten.
Boughali expressed pride in the Algerian people, whom he described as “the owners of the right and guardians of national memory.” He considered the proposed law as “one of the fruits of their long struggle and their continued insistence on defending their sovereignty and dignity.”
He emphasized that the issue of criminalizing French colonialism in Algeria is a matter that transcends sensitivities and differences. He added that holding the session was not merely a procedural matter.
