A tribute gone wrong. In Perpignan, the majority Rassemblement national headed by Mayor Louis Aliot, who is also a candidate for the presidency of the party, proposed to the deliberation of the municipal council to name a new esplanade with the name of Pierre Sergent.
A decision that generated little agitation within the Perpignan assembly, but which drew the ire of outside commentators, including the SOS Racisme association.
Pierre Sergent: Resistance Fighter, OAS Member, and Coup Leader
The former soldier, politician and writer was, among others, the first deputy of the National Front (FN) for the Pyrénées-Orientales, in addition to having been a general councilor and having been a member of the municipal council of Perpignan.
But what surprised observers, in particular the SOS Racisme association, which announced that it was seizing the Pyrénées-Orientales prefecture to invalidate the procedure, was above all the activity of Pierre Sergent at the beginning of the 1960s.
In January 1961, he participated in the creation of the Organization of the Secret Army (OAS), a pro-French Algerian terrorist group, and was later one of its leaders. He also participated in the generals’ coup of April 1961, dubbed the “Algiers coup”, an attempted coup to keep Algeria under French control.
Historians now estimate that the OAS is responsible for the deaths of at least 1,600 to 2,400 dead in 1961 and 1962, including 80 to 85% “Muslims,” the name of the time for indigenous populations.
“A faithful patriot”, “a man of honor”, explains the municipal councilor
The mayor of the city Louis Aliot, who proposed to name a new esplanade with this name, justifies his choice:
Pierre Sergent was “an emblematic character of this struggle [la Guerre d’Algérie]because he was from Perpignan, because he was a councilor from Perpignan, a departmental councilor from Pyrénées-Orientales and a deputy for Pyrénées-Orientales”, explained the councilor during the municipal council on September 22nd.
“Some only have glasses in front of their eyes so as not to see Pierre Sergent’s life as a whole. It is a whole journey from the Resistance to other resistances,” he stressed, invoking Pierre Sergent’s past fight against the Nazi occupiers during the Second World War. World War.
Du côté des oppositions, l’ancien maire Jean-Marc Pujol (Les Républicains) applauded the decision of the RN majority: “Il ne s’agit pas de politique, il s’agit d’histoire et d’honneur. (. ..) Pierre Sergent a fait partie de ces hommes d’honneur who ont refused that l’on abandonne un pays qui s’appelait l’Algérie française”, at-il scandé tout en rappelant être lui-même né in French Algérie.
On this city council that does not include an elected leftist, the real opposition, albeit measured, ultimately came from another elected Republican:
“Political violence should never be valued and that is what you are doing today with this election. Innocents, elected officials of the Republic, activists have been killed for their ideas. The indiscriminate attacks have spread terror”, highlighted Christine Gavalda-Moulenat, municipal councilor of LR. , however acknowledging the importance of Pierre Sergent in local history and his past fights.
Deadly activities but “amnesties” of several presidents of the Republic
Pierre Sergent has never been convicted for his terrorist and coup activities. And rightly so, the multiple amnesties pronounced under Charles de Gaulle, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and even François Mitterrand, from 1962 to 1982.
The facts imputed today to Pierre Sergent are not, or at least no longer, illegal. But for Dominique Sopo, president of SOS Racisme, this does not detract from the atrocity of the acts of the military man honored today:
“Under the impulse of Louis Aliot, the Perpignan City Council named an esplanade after Pierre Sergent, an active participant in the 1961 generals’ coup in Algiers and one of the leaders of the OAS, a terrorist group that attacked during the last years of the Algerian War,” tweeted Dominique Sopo.
The reaction of the Pyrénées-Orientales prefecture to this referral is not yet known.
Source: BFM TV
