11. The French Indulged in Violent Reprisals at Setif
After the unrest was suppressed in the Setif region and order was restored, French authorities carried out brutal reprisals against native Algerians. French soldiers performed a ratissage, or “raking over” of Algerian rural communities suspected of involvement in the unrest, in which thousands were shot in summary executions. Simultaneously, French settlers went on a vigilante rampage in which they lynched Algerians seized from local jails, randomly shot natives out of hand, tortured them to death, or doused them in fuel and set them on fire.
Humiliation routinely accompanied the repression. Algerian men were frequently forced to kneel in front of a French flag, then made to shout “We are dogs” before they were led away, never to be seen again. By the time the violence finally came to an end weeks later, thousands of Algerian natives had perished. The exact numbers are unknown, but most historians put the death toll of the tragic events at Setif within a range of 6,000 to 20,000, while some contemporary news sources put the figure as high as 45,000.