France declassifies Algeria independence war files involving minors

France will authorise the consultation of the Algerian Independence War archive files involving minors, further easing access to the problematic archive that Paris kept classified for decades.

On Sunday, Le Journal Officiel, a state bulletin that publishes official legislative and regulatory decrees, announced the "expansion of access to the judicial archives between 1 November 1954 and 31 December 1966" to include those involving minors.

Two years ago, French President Emmanuel Macron authorised access to the archives on the Algerian independence war against the French colonisation to nurse historical scars and mend ties with Algiers.

However, access to these documents remained difficult for families and researchers in practice.

One of the main obstacles was the classification of files involving minors – those under 21, according to the legislation in force at the time. 

Archives involving minors are usually subject to a one-hundred-year classification period.

"This bureaucratic management leads to ignoring the reality of a war waged by young people," said the French historian Marc André in November 2022.

In a tribune to the daily Le Monde, French historian Marc André lambasted the classification as "historical ignorance that symbolically redoubles the violence against a 'minor'." 

"(...) who was not tried by a juvenile court but appeared before a military tribunal: sufficiently of age at the time to have his head cut off, he is today sufficiently minor to see his file subtracted from the general derogation," he argued.

However, files that "infringe the privacy of people's sexual life" or "the safety of named or easily identifiable persons involved in intelligence activities" remain classified.

The history of French colonisation in Algeria is infamous for its horrendous war crimes. 

On 8 May 1945, up to 45,000 Algerians were killed for demanding independence for their country, according to Algerian official figures. The massacre marked the most considerable carnage committed by France in a single day.

As the Algerian liberation war gained momentum in 1954, the violence escalated. Approximately 1.5 million Algerians were killed and millions more displaced in an eight-year struggle for independence that ended in 1962.

In 2017, President Emmanuel Macron, still a candidate at the time, broke for the first time the long-standing political silence on the bloodiest period in the recent history of France, as he acknowledged "the crimes against humanity" French colonisation committed in its former colony.

However, Macron's efforts to ease the historical tensions between Paris and its former colony were paralysed by his refusal to apologise for his country's crimes.

"I do not have to ask for forgiveness; this is not the goal," Macron told the French weekly Le Point in January.

The issue of France's apology for its colonial past in Algeria (1830-1962) is at the heart of the tensions between Paris and Algiers.

In 2020, Algeria half-heartedly received a report prepared by the French historian Benjamin Stora upon assignment from Macron, in which he called for a series of initiatives to achieve reconciliation between the two countries. 

However, the report did not recommend apologising or expressing remorse, which Algeria constantly demands.