The Algerian Embassy in Manama Commemorates the Migration Day, October 17, 1961-2023.

The Seine River massacre in Paris is among the many moments in which Algerians in the diaspora demonstrated their strong attachment to their motherland. Indeed, the national community abroad, especially in France, represented the key driving force to the Liberation Revolution and the vital environment from which the latter derived its support. The French authorities viewed with a jaundiced eye this effective patriotic role played by the members of this community, so they decided to impose a siege on the movements, and even communications of the Algerians in France to the point of imposing a curfew and arresting large numbers of immigrants and sending them to prisons and detention centers in Algeria.

On the evening of October 17, 1961, only five months before the end of the Liberation War, tens of thousands of Algeriansfrom all segments of the community (men, women and children), including sympathizers and activists, demonstrated peacefully against the curfew imposed on them by the police chief, Maurice Papon. The French authorities did nothing but met them with the most hideous violence and brutality, that was coupled with a policy of opacity and bending of truth. More than eleven thousand people have been arrested, brutalized and detained in makeshift camps. Cold-bloodedly, more than a hundred people were shot dead in the Seine River. The next day, the official French account of these events reported the death of only two people.

Events have and continue to prove the commitment of our national community abroad to the homeland and its readiness to make the greatest sacrifices on the altar of its preeminence.

May Algeria remain forever strong and invincible.

The Ambassador, Dr. Mahmoud Braham