On January 27th, 2024, 1:00PM (EST)–A peaceful gathering was organized by Kabylia’s Women Voices by the office of Amnesty International to denounce a grim milestone in human rights violations that was reached in Kabylia. Many Kabylians have joined their call even though it was bitterly cold–some are activists for Kabylia Self-determination Movement, others are Kabylians who came to share their concern about the unprecedented level of human rights abuses that the Algerian colonial regime is enduring to the Mother Land Kabylia. Some participants wore masks because they wanted to avoid being identified by the Algerian Intelligence Services, since the Algerian terrorist regime is cracking down on Kabylians’ activists who are sympathizing and supporting Kabylia to be self-determined through a referendum. Therefore, thousands of Kabylians are welcome to Kabylia, because anyone who adventure to travel back home is facing arrestation, withdraw of passport, humiliation, bulling, etc. The saddest thing is that many Kabylians could not attend funerals of their relatives and say goodbye to their loved ones.

After observing a minute of silence to honor the victims lost in a blaze that engulfed Kabylia during summer 2021/2023, in which Algerian military regime is accused by the population to be the sole perpetrator to implement its scorched-earth policy in Kabylia. Participants in this event intervened, and spoke firmly and loudly against the Algerian dreadful regime that terrorizing Kabylians and made Kabylia an open sky prison.

In the statement that Women’s Voices leader read, she mentioned that Algeria has imprisoned more than 400 innocents Kabylians and condemned 38 Kabylians to death sentence. “All of them are innocents”, She said, later in her speech she added: “all the prisoners are hostages of the Algerian criminal regime and must be immediately released”.  Another organizer said, “We must speak out against injustice, each voice count to make the difference in order to put pressure on the Algerian colonial regime”. She continued her speech by exhorting Amnesty International to put Kabylia’s detainees on its agenda.

Here’s the full statement of Kabylia’s Women of Quebec:

“We, Kabylia women of Quebec, refuse to be silent towards the brutality of the Algerian criminal regime, which continues to terrorize our people and intensifies its ferocity to maintain terror by implementing   its “Zero Kabyle Plan”; which a genocidal project aimed to exterminating the Kabylians in Algeria. 

Today, we are in front of the office of Amnesty International in Montreal, to ensure the voice of all our political and opinion prisoners, our death row inmates and their families are heard. We also want to express firmly our unwavering and unconditional support for our detainees, their families, those who disappeared as well as the victims of the 2021/2023 arson. We refuse to abdicate and bow to the order established by this military junta. For years, Kabylia has suffered racism at all levels, antikabylism, and visceral hatred from the Algerian authorities and their military agents who behave like the Gestapo. We live the hardest and most dangerous moments in our history. Currently we are facing a discriminatory, dictatorial, and criminal power. We witness serious human rights violations daily through mass arrests, illegal persecution, harassment, and humiliation of citizens. The toll of these abuses is horrendous, more than 400 hostages, detained in Algerian prisons, 38 sentenced to death, disappeared activists, thousands are exiled, not to mention youth people forced to leave Kabylia by risking their lives in the Mediterranean rather than finding themselves in prisons. Today, in Algeria being Kabylian is a sufficient offence to justify the application of Article 87 bis, a scoundrel and a fundamentally racist law. Given these alarming and concerning facts, we call on Amnesty International, as well as all human rights institutions, to intervene to put an end to the planned violations that Algeria is carrying out in Kabylia.”

Kabylia’s Women Voices 

 Quebec, 27 January 2024