Athletes from Algeria, a country that was colonized by France from 1830 to 1962, honored the victims of the “Paris Massacre” during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
“The Algerian athletes threw red roses they had prepared into the river during the opening ceremony on board a ship along the Seine River in Paris, France, in honor of the victims of the 1961 Paris massacre,” the Associated Press reported on Sunday.
“Long live Algeria!” some officials chanted.
The Paris Massacre was a 1961 incident in which Paris police massacred Algerian protesters and dumped some of their bodies in the Seine River.
The exact number of victims is not known, but historians have analyzed that more than 200 people were killed based on eyewitness accounts.
The incident was obscured by a cover-up by French authorities until 2012, when former French President François Hollande publicly acknowledged the events 51 years after they occurred.
In October 2021, French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his deepest regrets on the 60th anniversary of the tragedy, calling it “an unforgivable crime committed under the authority of (then-Paris Metropolitan Police Chief) Maurice Papon.” 온라인카지노사이트