All this, however, remained concealed from the gaze of the public in France until, in July 1959, the conservative Figaro launched a bombshell in the form of a searing report from a correspondent who had visited a camp near Philippeville. For two years the inhabitants had been living in tents, fifteen to each, where in summer the temperature reached 110ŶF. Many of the children were unable to attend school because of lack of clothes, and the hunger was acute: "I shall not easily forget those arms hardly thicker than a stick, those fearful expressions, those hollow faces." The Figaro report provoked a major uproar, on Left and Right, and was followed by a spate of similar accounts in other newspapers.

XREF: Connects to histories of colonial concentration camps and media exposés that finally publicize long-suppressed atrocities.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1022