More than one and a half million Algerians are said to have lost their lives during the colonial and independence wars.
The French government allowed the publication of documents from the Algerian colonial period. Documents that reveal perhaps one of the most horrific crimes against humanity. The 132-year-old crime of the French colonialists against the Algerian people is not limited to the surviving black-and-white photographs of the twentieth century showing dismembered bodies. Even the 18,000 skulls of beheaded Algerian citizens housed in a museum in Paris are not France’s greatest crime against the people of North Africa.One of the most horrific crimes is the country’s 17 nuclear tests in the Algerian desert between 1960 and 1966. A crime that, according to the Algerian Army magazine in 2010, in its first example, the French hung 150 Algerians as laboratory mice on pillars in the nuclear test site to understand how nuclear radiation affects humans. What do you know about this horrible crime?
Narrating the crime, without accepting responsibility
Even French President Emmanuel Macron will not “repent” or “apologize” for the killing of hundreds of thousands of Algerians by the French government in the 1950s and 1960s. France, however, said it was ready to take “symbolic action”.
According to Euronews, in this regard, Emmanuel Macron ordered to facilitate access to classified documents related to the Algerian war and the country’s independence between 1954 and 1962. Algeria was under French occupation for 132 years, and on March 19, 1962, after years of fighting and resistance, it gained its independence, and the last French troops left Algeria in 1971.Now, on the anniversary of the country’s independence, it seems that Macron has decided to remove the dark stain of colonialism and historical violence from the face of France in line with the policy of reconciliation. The French historian Benjamin Stora has been responsible for compiling a report on France’s role during the colonial and Algerian War of Independence over the past year.
Blue Mouse” operation more destructive than “little boy”
France has been working hard on its nuclear program since 1954. In 1957, the then Prime Minister of France, Pierre Mendes France, ordered the establishment of nuclear test centers. The experiments were originally intended for the French-occupied islands in the Pacific, but for logistical reasons, the French eventually decided to conduct the experiments in the deserts of Algeria. France’s first nuclear explosion on February 13, 1960, was known as the “Blue Mouse” experiment . The experiment was carried out under the direct supervision of then-French President Charles de GaulleDone . The bomb had an explosive power equal to 60,000 to 70,000 tons of TNT and five times the power of the “little boy” atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima residents on the morning of August 6, 1945. Thus, after the United States, the former Soviet Union and Britain, France became the fourth country to join the Nuclear Club.
42,000 victims of 17 nuclear tests
From 1960 to 1996, the French government conducted 210 nuclear tests. Of these, he conducted 17 tests in the Algerian desert and 193 nuclear tests on the French island of Polynesia in the South Pacific. Of the 17 experiments in Algeria, 4 were conducted (1960-1962) at ground level (in the Raqqa region) and 13 were conducted underground (1962-1966) underground (in the city of Temenrast). Is. “When the French nuclear bomb was tested, a mushroom cloud flew into the sky like this explosion, but the wind quickly carried it to residential areas and into the area,” said Mohammed al-Raqani, an eyewitness in recent years. “It so happened that we could not see our distance from three meters.”
After its nuclear test, France released a map showing the radioactive contaminated area, according to which a small area was contaminated, but in 2013, real maps were released showing the contaminated areas, including the coast of Africa. , West and Central Africa. According to published documents, the nuclear radiation reached Mali 24 hours after the nuclear test and Senegal, Chad, Central Africa and Mauritania four days later.
“The effect of nuclear radiation could last from 10 seconds to 10 million years, and France destroyed living space,” said Algerian historian Mohamed Hassan Zaghidi. “The occupying French used 42,000 Algerians as laboratory mice,” said French researcher Brino Barillo. Forty-five years after the end of the experiments, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned of an increase in airborne sand particles contaminated with radiation by increasing radiation levels in the Raqan area. To date, there are no detailed epidemiological studies to be aware of the health risks and effects of rhubarb tests. In 2010, the French parliament passed a law recognizing victims of nuclear tests and establishing a fund to compensate sick and injured victims.
Of course, it should also be noted that this crime is only part of the horrific crimes committed by the French in Algeria, where more than one and a half million Algerians are said to have lost their lives during the colonial and independence wars.
