Sunday, August 2, 2009

Setif, Algeria

A fabulous map card!! Well, it comes from a hard to get country...so it has to be special :) And nevertheless, its a great map too! (For some reason, im overusing the word "nevertheless" lately...i honestly, dont know why...just comes spontaneously...malapropism wouldnt be surprising...
There are loads of information on the back of the card, but unfortunately, its all in French, so unfortunately they are of no use to me.
All i can tell you is that this card shows the town of Setif, which among else is famous for Djemila, the Unesco whs...something i have already posted about here, on my first Algerian card.
The sender says that it is also famous for the massacres committed by the French army on May 8th, 1945. It is said that the initial outbreak occurred on this day, the same as when the Nazi Germany surrendered in the WWII. A parade by the Muslim Algerian population of Setif to celebrate Victory in Europe Day ended in clashes between the marchers and the local French gerdarmerie. Attacks on pied noirs in the neighbouring countryside then resulted in the deaths of 103 Europeans, mostly civilians, plus another hundred wounded.
After five days of chaos French military and police restored order but then carried out a series of reprisals. The army, which included Senegalese troops, carried out summary executions. These reprisals killed anywhere between 1,020 and 45,000 people (of course, this depends on which source is trying to implement the information into your brain). he Setif outbreak and the repression that followed marked a turning point in the relations between France, which had colonized Algeria since 1830, and the Muslim population.


the stamp is a commemorative one from a set of two, issued in 2009, called Islamic Heritage - city views. This one shows the Mausoleum Sidi-Ibrahim El Atteuf in Ghardaia

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