CHAPTER TWO: HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND CURRENT CHALLENGES more importantly, freedom. These included the widespread massacres committed on 8 May 1945, during which 45 000 people were brutally killed for having dared to demand the freedom so recently achieved in Europe, in whose attainment they had so actively participated. This contributed to convincing the Algerian people that armed struggle against colonialism was inevitable. 55. The National Liberation Front (FLN) 5 was established following these events in the light of the need for a liberation struggle. The FLN engaged the colonial power in armed confrontation on 1 November 1954. A first wave of attacks, followed by numerous other armed actions, revealed the existence of an organised and determined Algerian opposition. It also drew the attention of French public opinion to the situation in Algeria. 56. Echoes in France of the Battle of Algiers of 1957, questioning among the French public and difficulty in justifying colonial policy (e.g. Tunisia had attained independence in 1957) forced General De Gaulle to recognise the inevitability of the country‟s self-determination in 1959. He then had to deal with discontent among the French colonists born in Algeria (the pieds-noirs), who enjoyed their status in the colony, and a section of the French army. 57. In 1961, French generals plotted a military putsch in Algiers. Their attempt failed, but they were still opposed to General de Gaulle‟s policy and created the Secret Army Organisation (OAS), which perpetrated random acts of terror in France and Algeria. A referendum was eventually organised in metropolitan France and Algeria in January 1961. The results overwhelmingly supported Algeria‟s independence, which became a reality in the following year with the Evian Agreements. 58. It was thus at the end of the protracted Algerian War that Algeria attained independence on 5 July 1962 after 132 years of colonial occupation. The war claimed many lives: 25 000 French soldiers, 2000 members of the Foreign Legion and 1.5 million Algerians were killed. Some 8000 villages and one million hectares of forest were razed to the ground; and over two million Algerian nationals were deported to concentration camps. The Algerian War left a lasting impression on the collective consciousness of the two countries. In 2000, revelations by the French military, who admitted to using torture during the conflict, reopened the debate in France. 5 The National Liberation Front (FLN) founded on 10 October 1954 in French Algeria, became public on 1 November 1954 to engage in a national war of independence against French colonisation, which had been in existence since 1830, and create a Democratic Peoples Republic of Algeria. It was headed by nine personalities: Hocine Aït Ahmed, Ahmed Ben Bella (future First President of the Independent Republic of Aleria), Krim Belkacem (assassinated in Frankfurt in 1970), Mostefa Ben Boulaïd, Larbi Ben M'Hidi (died in prison after torture), Rabah Bitat, Mohamed Boudiaf (Head of State assassinated after six months in office on June 29, 1992 in Annaba), Mohamed Khider (assassinated on January 4, 1967 in Madrid) and Didouche Mourad. 41