By Tanina Tamezehwalt

(Cape Town, South Africa)– I denounce the tyranny that Kabylia has been suffering since 1962, and this plight has recently intensified, reaching a new record since 2021.

Kabylia is a territory marked by resistance and resilience against any form of submission in North Africa, known for its attachment to its Amazigh (Berber) civilization and indigenous identity. Kabylians are known for their deep love for their ancestral land, mountains, and the Mediterranean. Also, they are open-minded to the outside world. They are multilingual; however, the Kabylian language is their first language, and they are proud of it. 

Their worldview is based on respect for any human being, tolerance, and mutual respect.

They are deeply attached to their culture, language, and identity. Their spirituality is based on respect for diversity and religious tolerance. Secularism has naturally imposed itself in the Kabylian society. Therefore, these values of respecting and protecting human dignity are a priority to Kabylia’s political governance which seeks to recover by being independent from the colonial Algeria which imported a foreign culture and wanted to impose it to the will of the Kabylian people.

Kabylia paid a heavy sacrifice against French colonialism for freedom and dignity. Unfortunately, it has experienced an endless nightmare to the extent that the Algerian regime has put it in its sights by wanting at all costs to erase its identity by assimilating it to the Arab world, to the Arabs, in order to erase it from North Africa.

The Algerian State is racist, belligerent, and criminal, it governs only through violence, it has no legitimacy in Kabylia. Its president is not recognized in Kabylia, because for us, he is a colonial president. In 2019, Kabylia did not vote, and in 2024, Kabylia did not vote either. The Algerian president is therefore a foreign and illegitimate president to Kabylia.

Human rights violations and abuses terrorize all Kabylians, through harsh and arbitrary arrests of social, cultural, and political activists who peacefully claim their universal right to self-determination to live in safety and dignity in the land of their ancestors.

This repressive machinery aims primarily to subjugate all activists who desire a better future for Kabylia’s future generations.

Indeed, more than 500 political detainees are imprisoned in inhumane conditions, suffering torture and sexual abuse. 38 others are sentenced to death penalty by an unfair and partial judiciary system, instrumentalized by the military and state hierarchy.

In addition, freedom of worship in Kabylia is threatened, over 40 churches are closed due to the intolerance, and against freedom of belief.

Families of the detainees are subjected to daily intimidation, and terror has reached members of the Kabyla’s diaspora. The are extremely concerned and anguished from seeing their parents, children, brothers, and sisters subjected to mistreatment, torture, kidnapping, sequestration to force them into silence against their will. The services forces of the Algerian colonial State don’t only content using odious practices of the Middle Ages, but they also economically overwhelm the Kabylian activists by firing them from their jobs. Similarly, it demonizes and vilifies them by considering them as terrorists. Moreover, thousands of citizens cannot leave Kabylia, and thousands of members of diaspora can no longer return to Kabylia fearing arrests, mistreatment, and incarceration.

In each revolt or uprising, the ruthless Algerian regime prefers to shed blood, instead of advocating a path of peace and dialogue. It kills and imprisons without restraint and stifles any legitimate protest. Thus, in 2001, in the peaceful protest, following the assassination of a high school student by the “Algerian Gendarmerie” in Kabylia, left more than 128 dead and thousands injured by the forces of the “Algerian occupation”. During these protest events, a young Kabylian man wounded by a bullet wrote the word “FREEDOM” on a wall with his own blood, before succumbing to his injuries.

To demand justice and dignity. A peaceful march was organized by Kabylian organizations that attracted over a million Kabylian marchers to the capital–Algiers.

Some of the Algiers population was astonished and asked: “what do these mountain people seek?”, and invited the demonstrators to return home, instead of showing solidarity and empathy.

Obviously, this historic march was savagely repressed.

In August 2021, arson attacks orchestrated by the Algerian Services ravaged Kabylia: hundreds of people were burned alive, thousands were injured, and fauna and flora, which are vital sources for the survival of its inhabitants, were completely devastated. 

The disgrace did not abate to this tragedy, because these fires have become a deliberate scourge, a routine implemented by the Algerian colonial state that has been deployed for several years to make Kabylia an unlivable territory–a hell. It is also an evil plan to smear and demonize Kabylians locally and internationally, by particularly accusing the MAK activists–members of the self-determination movement of Kabylia to be behind these criminal fires.