The Algerian Embassy in Hungary held a ceremony on October 17th, 1961, to celebrate the national day of emigration.
On this occasion, His Excellency the Algerian Ambassador to Hungary, Mr. Abdelhafid Alahoum, recalled that 17 October 1961 was one of the most important and worst events in the history of the Algerian revolution.
Upon order of Paris police governor Maurice Papon, French police opened fire, that day, on thousands of Algerian migrants who took to the streets in peaceful protest against the law imposing a racist and arbitrary curfew on Algerians in Paris in 1961 and demanded Algerian independence.
Monsieur l'Ambassadeur pointed out that the massacre committed by France in a media blackout against Algerian demonstrators killed in the streets and metro stations, and others thrown into the Seine, constitutes an organized State crime without obsolescence, adding that thousands of Algerians were arrested, some of whom died under torture.
According to many historians, this was “the most violent suppression of a demonstration in Western Europe in modern history”. Estimates suggest that between 300 and 400 martyrs were killed, in addition to many who disappeared.