If you cross the Seine in the centre of Paris at the iconic Pont Saint-Michel and walk along the promenade, you may glimpse a small plaque on your way towards the steps that lead down to the riverbank. Placed not on the actual bridge itself, but on a wall to the side, the plaque was mounted in October 2001 to mark 40 years since Parisian police, led by a Nazi war criminal, massacred hundreds of Algerian demonstrators on October 17 1961.
France and Algeria were gripped in a bloody war that would eventually lead to Algerian independence in 1962. On October 17, a demonstration organised by the Algerian National Liberation Front (Front de libération nationale – FLN) took place in the centre of Paris. The demonstrators were made up of Algerians – men, women, children, the elderly – who were living and working in Paris, mainly on the outskirts of the capital.
Importantly, as the FLN had insisted, this was a peaceful demonstration, protesting against a curfew imposed on Algerians living in Paris. As demonstrators marched in the heart of the French empire’s metropolitan centre, they were met with indiscriminate violence on the part of the Parisian police.
