Amid the celebration and spectacle of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, Algeria's delegation added a sombre note: a symbolic commemoration of dozens of people killed by police as they protested against French colonial rule in October 1961.
The route along the Seine river took teams along the same waterway where protesters were thrown by Paris police during a demonstration in support of Algerian independence from France on 17 October 1961.
Algerian athletes carried red roses with them as they sailed in the river parade, then tossed them into the water.
Some members of the delegation chanted "Long live Algeria!" in Arabic.
Watching from Algeria, the grandson of one of the victims called it "a moment of intense emotion".
"To make such a gesture, the day of the opening of the Olympics in Paris, is a monumental homage to the victims of 17 October," Yanis, whose grandfather Kaci Yahia disappeared into the Seine that day, told the Associated Press.
Colonial legacy
Some 12,000 people were arrested during the 1961 protest and an estimated 120 people died, according to historians. Many of the bodies were never recovered, while others dragged from the water showed signs of harrowing violence.
It came during the final year of Algeria's war for its independence, which it eventually won in 1962.
The French branch of the National Liberation Front (FLN) rallied protesters to defy a nighttime curfew and demonstrate peacefully around Paris.
Yet on the orders of Paris's infamously brutal police chief, Maurice Papon, the protests were violently broken up. Demonstrators were beaten, rounded up and murdered by officers who had been assured they would be protected from prosecution.
France and Algeria revisit painful past in battle to mend colonial wounds
Survivors and their descendants battled for decades for France to investigate the deaths and recognise its responsibility.
For years French authorities were reluctant to scrutinise the events, and it was only in 2001 that the state recognised that a massacre occurred.
In 2021, on the 60th anniversary of the killings, President Emmanuel Macron called the police's actions "crimes" and called them "inexcusable for the Republic".
Earlier this year, lawmakers backed a parliamentary motion that would create an official day of commemoration for the events.
(with AP)
