President Tebboune declares 8 May “National Day of Memory”

ALGIERS- President of the Republic Abdelmadjid Tebboune declared the 08 May of each year of “National Day of Memory” and ordered the creation of a national TV channel specialized in history.

“On this occasion, I took the decision to declare 8 May of each year National Day of Memory, and I also gave instructions for the creation a national television channel specializing in history, which support the teaching of this subject that we want to keep alive for all generations,” Tebboune said in a message to the nation on the 75th anniversary of the Massacres of 8 May 1945.

The President of the Republic said he also gave instruction to “complete the naming of towns and city districts with the names of the martyrs of the popular resistance and the glorious War of Liberation and to expand the restoration of historic monuments to bear witness, over the generations, to the heavy price our people paid to face the barbarity of colonial occupation in order to live freely and with dignity on their land, proud of their past from which they draw inspiration to shape their future in a true democracy and social justice.”

“Our history will always remain at the forefront of the concerns of the new Algeria and its youth, a history that we cannot, under any circumstances, omit in our foreign relations,” said the head of State.

President Tebboune called on “historians to elucidate every nook and cranny of this stage and all the others enshrined in the nation’s memory so that the rising generations know their history.”

“The nation that preserves its past protect itself and enhance its ability to mature popular consciousness in order to defeat the manoeuvres of racist currents and lobbies on the other side of the Mediterranean, and whose mentality of yesteryear has been irrevocably buried by the will of the people.”

Referring to the events of 8 May 1945, President Tebboune stated that these massacres “have definitively laid bare the true face of French colonization. The bloody and savage repression by abject colonisation will remain a mark of infamy stuck to the front of the coloniser who committed, for 132 years, imprescriptible crimes against our people despite the many attempts to erase them.”

Indeed, “these crimes oppose humanity and civilizational values because they are based on ethnic cleansing aimed at replacing the indigenous populations by the contribution of foreign populations. They also aimed at uprooting Algerians, plundering their wealth and erasing any foundation of their personality,” stressed the president.

Last modified on Friday, 08 May 2020 04:39