FRENCH ARMY veterans from the country’s former colonies are to have their military pensions raised to the same level as those of French nationals, President Nicolas Sarkozy has said.
Addressing the leaders of 13 former colonies on the eve of Bastille Day, Mr Sarkozy sought to put right a long-standing grievance when he confirmed the mostly African veterans – whose pensions were frozen in 1959 – would now enjoy “perfect equality”.
The Constitutional Council ruled in May that the longstanding practice of paying veterans from former colonies between one-tenth and one-fifth of the benefits given to French soldiers was illegal.
Hundreds of thousands of Africans served under the French flag in the two world wars, the Indochina wars of 1945-54 and the Algerian war of independence in 1954-62.
Some 10,000 are still alive, while the families of a further 20,000 will also benefit when a new military pension law is enacted by next January.
“There are debts which are never extinguished. It was time to recognise that,” Mr Sarkozy said in a speech marking the 50th anniversary of the independence of France’s sub-Saharan colonies.
The wage inequality has been a longstanding cause of discord between Paris and African capitals. In 2001, then president Jacques Chirac made some changes after the film Indigènes highlighted the situation of north African soldiers who helped to liberate France in the second World War.
Mr Sarkozy’s move came on the eve of Bastille Day, when 400 soldiers from 13 former French colonies will join the national day parade on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Their participation has been criticised by some as a patronising gesture that gives the impression that France granted its colonies independence as a magnanimous gesture when many of them waged political or guerilla campaigns against French rule.
Human rights campaigners have also objected, saying some of the African armies to be honoured today are involved in repression at home. “It is not the least of paradoxes that this celebration of the values of the republic will be soiled by the presence of torturers, dictators and other human rights predators, and that France is honouring them instead of prosecuting them,” Souhayr Belhassen, president of the International Federation of Human Rights, wrote in an open letter to Mr Sarkozy.