CAIRO, April 15, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – More than 1,000 French intellectuals and historians have signed a petition urging the abolition of a new law which asks history teachers to highlight the “positive aspects” of French colonialism.

“In retaining only the positive aspects of colonialism this law imposes an official lie on massacres that at times went as far as genocide on the slave trade, and on the racism that France has inherited,” read the petition carried by The Guardian on Friday, April 15.

Enacted in February, the law was meant to recognize the contribution of the 200,000 or so Algerians who fought alongside France's colonial troops in Algeria's war of independence, from 1954-62.

But MPs with close ties to France's community of former Algerian settlers apparently introduced an amendment to add a new clause to the bill that reads: “School courses should recognize in particular the positive role of the French presence overseas, notably in north Africa.”

The amendment has drawn anger in France with one of the principal objections being that, like most forms of colonialism, the French empire caused great suffering.

“The law is an insult to intelligence, a denial of democracy, a rejection of historical reality and a brake on academic freedom,” said the anti-racist group MRAP.

Above all, the group added, the legislation shows “contempt for the victims” of France’s colonialism.

Thierry Le Bars, a law professor at Caen University who has also signed the petition, agreed.

“Think of the ignoble legal status of the Muslims in Algeria, of the massacre of up to 5,000 Algerians in Setif in 1945, of all the unfortunates who endured the hell of slavery to assure the prosperity of Caribbean islands.”

A file photo of the French army in confrontation with demonstrators for Algerian independence, 1960.

A host of French historians lambasted the state’s attempt to impose an “official version of history”.

“It is imposing an official version of history, in defiance of educational neutrality,” said professor Gerard Noiriel.

“I cannot accept the authorities dictating to teachers the contents of their lessons.”

Eminent historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet echoed similar position.

“In Japan, a law defines the contents of history lessons, and textbooks minimize Japan's responsibility in the Sino-Japanese war. If France wants to be like that, it's going the right way about it,” he told Liberation.

Demonstrations and unrest have broken out in China last week to protest Japanese changes to textbooks to conceal the ignoble practices of the Japanese army against Chinese people in World War II.

The first of France's two empires began in the early 1600s in what are now Nova Scotia and Quebec.

Louisiana had been added by the end of the century, as had Caribbean territories including French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), according to the Guardian.

At the same time France got a foothold in West Africa (Senegal), and in India.

Most of that empire was lost by 1815, but a second began in 1830 with the invasion of Algeria.

Southern Vietnam and Cambodia followed, then, after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, the rest of French Indochina, Tunisia and Morocco, and almost all of western and central Africa.

Professor Noiriel said the law was “all the more dangerous” because of attempts by certain interest groups to “confiscate history for their own ends”.

“It can only contribute to a feeling of humiliation. It is directly opposed to the policy of integration the government claims to be implementing.”