Macron's remarks in late September that the Algerian nation did not exist before French colonial rule and that another colonization preceded his country's sparked a storm of condemnations in Algeria.
Algerian President Abdelmedjid Tebboune condemned Macron's remarks as an "unacceptable insult" to the victims of French colonial rule, recalled his country's Ambassador to France Antar Daoud for consultations and closed airspace to French military aircraft used by the latter in its counterterrorism operations in the Sahel.
In a televised interview, Tebboune narrated an official account of the French massacre of nearly 4,000 worshipers during the 1830-1962 colonial era. The worshippers were killed as they staged a sit-in inside an Ottoman Mosque called Ketchaoua in an effort to stop it from being converted into a church.
Algeria represents the most recent and bloodiest example of France's colonial history on the African continent.
Approximately 1.5 million Algerians were killed and millions more displaced in an eight-year struggle for independence that started in 1954, according to historians.
France had also committed cultural genocide against Algeria during the colonial era starting in 1830, destroying Algeria's 300-year-old Ottoman history and its own local identity while transforming many cultural and religious monuments in the country, Anadolu News Agency reported.
Skulls of Algerian fighters
Tellingly, the display of nearly 40 skulls of Algerian fighters put on display at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris is seen another manifestation of French atrocities during their brutal occupation of Algeria from 1830 to 1962. The skulls of Algerian fighters were taken to France as war trophies in the 19th century.
In July 2020, France returned 24 skulls of Algerian fighters.
In 2011, Algerian historian and researcher Ali Farid Belkadi had discovered the skulls at the Museum of Man in Paris, across from the Eiffel Tower, and alerted Algerian authorities.
The returned skulls belonged to two dozen fighters who were members of Algeria's resistance movement that were killed and decapitated during the mid-19th-century conflict. Among the key figures repatriated were Bou Amar Ben Kedida and Si Mokhtar Ben Kouider Al Titraoui.
Seven of those in the collection were remains of resistance figures dating back to the famous Battle of Zaatcha in 1849, in which over 1,000 people were massacred. The skulls include those of Sheikh Bouziane, who led the resistance during the Zaatcha siege, and Mohamed Ben Allel Ben Mbarek, the lieutenant of the national resistance figure Emir Abdelkader.
Among the remains were those of revolt leader Sheikh Bouzian, who was captured in 1849 by the French, shot and decapitated, and the skull of resistance leader Mohammed Lamjad ben Abdelmalek, also known as Cherif Boubaghla (the man with the mule).
A military ceremony took place on the tarmac at Houari Boumediene Airport to receive planes carrying the skulls. President Tebboune welcomed them, remarking in a speech that the fighters "had been deprived of their natural and human right to be buried for more than 170 years."
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