War context was missing

Nabila Ramdani’s comment article in August Phone cameras are essential for justice is problematic where it talks of the “drowning and beating to death of up to 300 Algerians” because it fails to put the event into any context with greater detail.

What of the thousands put on to Paris streets by the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale, with which France was at war; or the many police killed by gun or knife attacks in Paris? Natur­ally, this cannot in any way justify such brutal repression.

The war claimed 30,000 French soldiers’ lives. I don’t know how many Algerians, civilians or soldiers, pieds noirs were murdered or ‘disappeared’ after independence... but France was not a dictatorship and the CRS was not a paramilitary group or milice.

A. CHANCONIE, Dordogne