The fallout of the tragic Black Spring of 2001 continues, as Amazigh leaders in the troubled Kabylie region have been staging demonstrations, sit-ins, and appealing for justice for five detainees held by Algerian authorities since last October. In recent weeks, Amazigh protesters have rallied in Tizi Ouzou and sent letters from community organizers to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria and visiting President Jacques Chirac of France. But without some significant change in the status quo – either in the political will of the Algerian leadership or more effective organizing by Amazigh groups – there seems to be little reason to expect a breakthrough.
The coordinating committee of Arouch, or village councils, has been gathering weekly to call for the release of five of its members, who have been in police custody, without charges filed, since their arrests at a protest last October. This week the committee held a sit-in in front of Tizi Ouzou’s main court. Earlier in the week, the Arouch citizens movement sent a letter to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, admonishing him for his administration’s failure to implement the Amazigh’s demands as laid out in the El Kseur Platform. The demands call for a number of reforms, including the withdrawal of the reactionary gendarmes from Kabylie and greater recognition of the Amazigh’s cultural and economic rights. The letter accused the president of sitting on the demands, and using them as “bargaining chips” instead of negotiating in good faith.
The gap in understanding between Amazigh communities and Algerian authorities seems to be as wide as ever. On March 7, a peaceful rally in downtown Tizi Ouzou was forcibly dispersed by police firing tear gas canisters on protesters. Apparently the police moved to break up the crowd even before speakers took the stage.
A few days earlier, on March 2, a group of Arouch leaders delivered a letter to the French embassy during President Jacques Chirac’s visit. In it they issued a sharp condemnation of the government’s policies: “Your visit, Mr. President, takes place at a moment when human rights are violated in Algeria by a ferocious repression against citizens. This has increased sharply in the last 21 months because the citizens demanded a minimum of freedom. It repression has been carried out through premeditated killings with real bullets, arbitrary arrests, imprisonment without trial, while the killers go unpunished or are being promoted.”
Strikes and protests have been common events in Kabylie since the Black Spring, which erupted after the death of a teenager in gendarme custody. More than a hundred Amazigh died in the riots that followed, and much of their current anger can be traced to the government’s failure to investigate or bring up any of the gendarmes on charges for the killings. Amazigh leaders decry the lack of significant progress in negotiations with the government, which apparently feels it has little to lose politically with a policy of inaction. Some observers of the standoff say that divisions within the Amazigh movement, between the Arouch and other parties such as the Rally for Culture and Democracy, prevent the united front that could force the government to the table.
