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French lawmakers voted unanimously on Thursday to repeal the Code Noir, a colonial-era law that classified slaves as property, in a historic showdown with one of the darkest pillars of France's imperial past.
Although France abolished slavery in 1848, the 17th-century text itself was not officially removed from the books until today's vote.
All 254 lawmakers present in the National Assembly supported the repeal in a rare show of cross-party unity. The bill was introduced by Guadeloupean MP Max Mathiasin and received support from lawmakers across the political spectrum.
Originally signed by King Louis XIV in 1685, the Code Noir regulated slavery throughout France's colonies and reduced slaves to "movable property" that could be bought and sold. The related decrees also imposed brutal punishments for runaway slaves, including branding, mutilation, and execution.
The vote comes 25 years after France passed the so-called Taubira law that recognized slavery and the slave trade as crimes against humanity, a defining moment in the country's confrontation with its colonial history. Mathiasin called Thursday's repeal "a powerful act of remembrance, justice and recognition," while acknowledging that it would not "merely heal the wounds of history."
President Emmanuel Macron supported the measure last week, saying the 60 articles of the Code Noir should never have survived the abolition of slavery.
"The silence, even indifference, that we have maintained for almost two centuries towards this Code Noir is no longer an oversight. It has become a form of insult," Macron said.
France operated the third-largest slave trade in the world, forcibly transporting an estimated 1.4 million Africans to plantations that helped enrich port cities like Nantes and Bordeaux.
Heret qenkan kujtuar kolonizatoret. Me e bukura eshte se nuk kane bythe tu kerkojne ndjese popujve qe skllaveruan sepse pranimi i ndjese u hap probleme te paguajne edhe qimet e kokes per demet e shkatuara njerezore e natyrore. Kur Nelson Mandela u kerkoi demshperblim Britanikeve, Tony Blair nuk u ndje fare, megjithe relatat e mira qe kishin e me pas u ftohen me Mandelen te gjithe Perendimoret.