by Tala Tilleli

(Paris)–Boualem Sansal, a French- Algerian author and intellectual, was arrested and imprisoned since mid-November, upon his arrival at Algiers airport by the Algerian military junta for daring in a French media to speak out and criticize the system of governance in Algeria, calling into question the current west borders of Algeria and affirming that the current Algeria is a purely colonial creation of France. 

Boualem Sansal has been known for his free speech and fierce criticism of the Algerian military state, but he has never been worried or harassed by the Algerian security services.

However, this time, he got arrested in a particular and unique geopolitical context: a few months after he acquired French citizenship, and following the deterioration of Algerian-French relationship after France recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara before the Moroccan Parliament on October 29, 2024.

Thus, the imprisonment of a French national in Algeria is probably a way to retaliate and take revenge against France, and a desire to humiliate its leadership internationally, given its new shifting on the status of Western Sahara.

While French public opinion, the press, politicians and intellectuals are stupefied and appalled about his arrest. In fact, the incarceration of Boualem Sansal is only the tip of the Algerian military’s regime iceberg.

Nevertheless, the hidden side of the iceberg is hundreds of Kabylians have suffered or suffer the same fate in a deafening silence and savage repression, since Algeria’s independence in 1962.

Indeed, since the independence of Algeria in 1962, the Kabylian people have become the main target of the Algerian military state, they are constantly suffering racism and human rights violations. Clearly, Algeria has implemented a destructive hegemonic plan against the Kabylian language, culture and identity, aimed at erasing this indigenous people in North Africa, by forcing its assimilation into the Arab world. Thus, this genocidal plan has triggered among the Kabylian people a cultural and political resistance for their survival and safeguard their existence. Moreover, Algeria, to ensure the success of its evil plan, did not hesitate to muzzle any protesting voice, by resorting to intimidation, judicial harassment, use of force, imprisonment, torture, disappearances and physical liquidations. Therefore, Algeria is behaving as a colonial state in Kabylia

Consequently, Algeria has accumulated a sad record, a milestone, in terms of human rights abuses in Kabylia, by instrumentalizing justice under the orders of the military hierarchy who decide in the barracks and military facilities the verdicts to be pronounced by judges and prosecutors.

Judges and prosecutors have thus become clerks and submissives to the service of generals and repression. This justice is called “INJUSTICE”, or “PHONE JUSTICE”. Its watchword is to reign fear by applying the usury policy in Kabylia. 

Moreover, Algeria to enforce its gruesome plan in Kabylia, an article of law has been created by the Algerian High Security Council, which is mainly composed of military generals, called 87bis, specially designed to consider any opposition to this authoritarian regime as a terrorist. Although, some lawyers are steadfast to defending the victims of this ruthless state by facing daily fear, threat and intimidation, others are often muzzled, their publications are monitored. “Sofine Ouali”, one of the lawyers was arrested several times, and he was prosecuted.

Violence and crimes applied against Kabylians is unbearable and heartbreaking, we’ll summarize it as follows:

1-   Missing individuals,

2-   Murders, assassination the eminent intellectual Mouloud Mammeri, the student Kamal Amzal and the singer Matoub Lounès, the novelist Tahar Djaout, etc,

3-   The bloody repression of the Kabylian Spring of 1980, and the protests of 1981, 

4-   In 2001, murders of 130 young Kabylians, and injuring at least 6000.

5-   Genocide attempt, in 2021. Arson ravaged Kabylia, killing more than 250 people, and a devastated flora and fauna,

6-    Arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of peaceful activists, more than 500 people were imprisoned,

7-    Arbitrary sentencing of 38 people to the death penalty for a crime orchestrated and committed by the Algerian security services,

8-   Harassment and intimidation of Kabylian living abroad,

9-   Thousands of Kabylians are forcibly pushed to exile.