Paris Massacre
When the Seine was full of bodies…
On October 17, 1961, when the Seine was full of bodies – as many as 300 Algerians massacred in Paris by order of the police Prefect, a Vichy Nazi collaborator, who was never prosecuted for this heinous crime. The provocation came in the form of a police order that Muslim “citizens” of Algeria only should be subject to a curfew from 8.30pm to 5.30am, on the pretext that there had been a significant increase in the number of attacks on policemen. What happened on 17 October 1961 is not a matter solely for historians. When Muslims are again being demonized to justify a police state, where those who represent the most narrow monopoly interests at home and abroad cannot tolerate any opposition, any resistance to the anti-social offensive and its striving for conquest and domination, it is an issue for the present and the future. France has not yet officially recognized the crime for various reasons. The first is that French officials from that era have continued, for a long time, to occupy senior positions in French governments. Remember, Maurice Papon, who was Paris police chief in 1961, was a Cabinet minister right up to 1981.