RED SEINE
Ost Fraktion
In the collective imagination France is a paradise of democracy, as French invented it with their famous revolution.
Of course the guillotine was a French invention too and looks as a good symbol for this song and its subject: the French colonialism in Algeria.
Without watering down the whole history of Algeria, it might be enough to look at the horror of the "Paris massacre".
On October 17th 1961, Maurice Papon, previously collaborationist of the Vichy Republic, chief of police in Paris decides to ban demonstrations and to prevent riots based on ethnicity: all the North-Africans were subject to a curfew and gathering was forbidden. But Algerians, eager to demonstrate for the independence of their country organized a peaceful mass demonstration. The reaction of Papon and the police was terrifying: 200 people killed and hundred injured. Unarmed protesters were attacked even with pickaxes and dumped injured or dead in the Seine. Witnesses told that the Seine looked red and in the following days the bodies re-emerged at Pont Saint-Michel.
Considering this massacre in their capital city, imagine what the inventors of the guillotine were able to do in Africa: executions, tortures and deportations of millions of people.
Black feet
الأقدام السوداء
Back home
العودة إلى المنزل
No house
دون منزل
Spit and slap
بصق وصفع
Black feet to Salazar
الأقدام السوداء لسالازار
Then to Franco
ثم إلى فرانكو
Then Pinochet
ثم بينوشيه
Black feet
الأقدام السوداء
Kings of torture
ملوك التعذيب
Bombing villages
قصف القرى
Moving people
تحريك الناس
Black feet
الأقدام السوداء
Dark soul
روح الظلام
Nazi methods to export
الأساليب النازية للتصدير
FLN beats up all of you
جبهة التحرير الوطني يتغلب عليكم جميعا
Sometimes the truth re-emerges
في بعض الأحيان تظهر الحقيقة من جديد
Sometimes a body re-emerges
في بعض الأحيان يضهر جسد من جديد
Pont Saint-Michel remembers you
يتذكرك جسر سان ميشيل
FLN beats up all of you
جبهة التحرير الوطني يتغلب عليكم جميعا
Black feet founded OAS
الأقدام السوداء أسسوا منظمة الجيش السري
Inspiration for CIA
إلهام لوكالة المخابرات المركزية
French out of Vietnam
الفرنسيون خارج فيتنام
French out of Algeria
الفرنسيون خارج الجزائر
Black feet founded OAS
الأقدام السوداء أسسوا منظمة الجيش السري
Inspiration for all the fascists
إلهام لكل الفاشيين
Thousands of death in the heart
الآف من الموت في القلب
FLN in the heart of Algeria
جبهة التحرير الوطني في قلب الجزائر