The European Court of Human Rights has condemned France for its inaction on a very sensitive subject in the country’s history.
New conviction for France this Thursday, April 4. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) considers that the living conditions of the harkis, auxiliaries of Algerian origin who fought alongside the French army during the Algerian war between 1954 and 1962, were not are “not compatible with respect for human dignity”, in reference to the reception camps where they stayed after their return from Algeria. According to’AFPthe country is guilty of violating the ban on subjecting nationals to inhuman or degrading treatment as well as their right to respect for private life and correspondence.
The ECHR noted that the State was liable for fault and thus made the decision that France had to pay more than 19,500 euros to the four applicants who demanded justice. If she said she was fine “aware of the difficulty of quantifying the damage suffered by the applicants”, it estimated this sum in proportion to the time spent in their reception camp. The ECHR considered that the amounts of reparations previously decided by French courts, up to 15,000 euros, had not been sufficient.
Degrading living conditions
The four applicants are French nationals born between 1957 and 1969, children of harkis from the same family, who arrived in France at the time of independence or were born in France shortly after. They lived alongside the Bias camp in Lot-et-Garonne until 1975. They pointed out different problems: confinement, the reading of their mail by the camp administration, schooling in a school in the structure… A fifth applicant had denounced a violation of the right of access to a court but which was not upheld by the ECHR. He therefore, for his part, was unsuccessful.
This is a new condemnation by the ECHR for France in less than two months. On February 8, the European court ruled that the use of a police trap during a demonstration in Lyon in 2010 was a violation of the freedoms of movement, assembly and expression. The case concerns in particular the surroundings of a dozen people for several hours by the police during a mobilization against a draft law on pension reform.