User:Lubnacordoba/Zeralda Affair

The case of Zeralda is a discrimination case that started off on the 1st of August 1942 in the town of Zeralda, Algeria during French Colonization. This case caused the death of 25 Algerians.

Facts
The case started with the decision made by Denis Fourcard, mayor of Zeralda, in 1941, to ban the access to the beach for Muslims and Jews. This ban was materialized by a sign placed on the same picket as another sign prohibiting the beach «to dogs and horses». Alerted by word of mouth many Muslim Algerians decided to go on the beach to see this ban’s sign.

The mayor, who wanted to develop balneary tourism in his town, justifies this decree by the disturbances apparently made by the native (called “indigènes” back then, had less rights than the French settlers) who came to relax on the beach and pick up wood.

The 1st of August 1942, Denis Fourcard accompanied by a police inspector, two country guards and about twenty of his citizens went through the town and arrested indigenous people accused of theft or of having violated the prohibition order. Finally, forty men and teenagers were locked in a small cellar of the town hall. These men tried to yell for help, but no one came. The mayor apparently said: “That they can all die, there will always be too many”. Few days later, one of the employees of the town hall found these men, a note quotes that: “They lay in the sweat piled on top of each other, covered most with scratches because in their desperate struggle against the dreadful death they saw before them and could not avoid, they struggled, the strongest crushing the weakest, the weakest fighting back”. On the forty men who were locked, twenty-five did not survive.

This case caused a strong emotion within the Muslim Algerian community, whereas the European population feared that revenge might come, the press was criticized because it treated this event little and for having called the victims "prowlers".

On August 3, 1942, a statement was made saying that following an investigation, the mayor, the police inspector and the two rural guards were charged with manslaughter by carelessness and placed under warrant of deposit.