France: A Day for a War’s Victims

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/10/world/europe/france-a-day-for-a-wars-victims.html

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The Senate on Thursday voted to designate March 19 as a national day of remembrance for the French and Algerian victims of the Algerian war of independence from 1954 to 1962. The measure was originally adopted in 2002 by the lower house of Parliament before being shelved for a decade. President François Hollande, who plans to visit Algeria in December, is hoping to gain Algerian backing for an African-led military intervention in northern Mali, which has been overrun by armed Islamist groups. In October, Mr. Hollande became the first French president to officially acknowledge that scores of Algerian independence protesters were killed by the French police at a rally in Paris in 1961. March 19 was selected as the day of remembrance because it was the date of the cease-fire that ended the fighting in 1962.