Using pick handles and rifle butts, the police force of one of the world's most civilized countries surrounded and savagely beat hundreds of dark-skinned men. They then threw them into the beautiful river that flows through a city celebrated for its cultural and artistic wonders. Those who were still alive after the beatings were left to drown.
This was Paris, City of Lights, on the night of October 17, 1961. To this day, nobody knows how many peaceful Algerian protesters died in this episode, concealed for years by menacing state power and a compliant press. Most estimates are in the hundreds. General Charles de Gaulle, towering hero of resistance to Hitler, had recently become President of France in an undoubted military putsch, tactfully concealed but firmly based upon paratroopers. He cannot possibly have been unaware of what was done that night.
A few months later, a left-wing protest against terrorist violence in the French capital, in the Rue de Charonne, was crushed with revolting, inexcusable force. Nine people died. In several cases their heads were smashed open by club-wielding police. During both these incidents the Paris prefect of police was a slippery former collaborator with the Nazis, Maurice Papon, who had cheerfully rounded up Jews during the German occupation. Papon also reintroduced torture to mainland France in the 1960s, and was complicit in de Gaulle's 1958 coup d'etat. De Gaulle later personally honored him, and in his retirement found him gainful employment. A French historian, Alain Dewerpe (whose mother was killed by the police in the Rue Charonne outrage) once said that, in return for their support in the de Gaulle putsch, the police were offered a massacre. His jibe has a nasty ring of truth.
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