United Nations
The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
Eighth Session

Algeria Oppresses Kabyle People
One of the First Amazigh Nations of Algeria

Massa Taselwayt, inevgawen n lḥerma, imceyεen n iɣerfan imenza, azul sɣur Tamurt n Iqvayliyen. Meqqar d sin wawalen-a s teqvaylit di tejmaεt n leğğnas yedduklen, ad nelli yissen tiwwura n tudert tagraɣlant tunṣivt i weɣref aqvayli.

Madam President, honorable representatives of the autochthonous peoples, the Kabyle people greet you in his language to mark his official entry to the Palace of United Nations on this Tuesday, May 26th, 2009.

The Kabyle people is, since the independence of Algeria (1962 ), the scapegoat of the Algerian regime which imposed itself by force. By stigmatizing every day the kabyles and by designating them to the public opinion as a big threat for the national unity, the Algerian government uses them as a scapegoat and as a tremendous means of political diversion at the country level. Kabylia has a strong personality who gives her an indissoluble identity in any political set which does not recognise her and respect her for what she is.

So, the 47 years which Kabylia and the Algerian regime spent together have been characterized by an endless arm wrestling whose climaxes are cyclic :

 Armed uprising in 1963-65, peaceful revolt during the “Amazigh Spring " of 1980,

 Creation of the first Algerian League of Human Rights in 1985,

 School boycott during all the year 1994-95,

 Peaceful revolt following the murder of the prominent and popular Kabyle singer Matoub Lounès in 1998.

 Murder of 126 Kabyle peaceful demonstrators by the Algerian gendarmes in 2001-2003 and over 1200 handicapped persons for life by real bullets were registered,

 Boycott of all the presidential elections since 1999 including the last ones, April 9th, 2009 (date of the last presidential elections) resulted in violent confrontations between Kabyle citizens (especially in the region of Tuvirett : Rafur, Imceddalen, Cherfa, At Hamdun, Taqervuzt, Tazmalt, At Zellal) and the troops dispatched by Algiers in order to vote in the place of the voters.

 10 days ago and again, Tala Ifassen and the village of Vouândas ( Kabylia-East) knew skirmishes which opposed 1600 gendarmes to the citizens of the village who demanded the incorporation of their village into a Kabyle administrative district. Thirty nine of them have inequitably and unjustly been sentenced to jail during an unfair and hasty lawsuit in which their defence was not assured.

It is important to remind that if the Algerian power mobilizes just about 800 gendarmes to eradicate the Islamist terrorism, we would not hear about it (terrorism) anymore in Kabylia after a very short period of time.

Identity Oppression

The denial of existence opposed to Kabyle people, one of the first nations of what we shall call Algeria, made of his identity, language, culture and history a taboo. For the Algerian power, the Kabyle man mustn’t have an identity, a language, or a territory. Kabylia mustn’t even have a name because, according to the Algerian power, she is nonexistent. The heart of the problem is thus existential. According to the upholders of the Algerian regime, she should only exist once its identity is died, digested by that of a racist and antikabyle power.

Military Occupation and Insecurity

At the moment and especially since the presidential elections of 2004, Bouteflika, the president whose election has always been questionable and unreliable, spread his net over the Kabyle territory to thwart an armed uprising which exists only in his head. In spite of this massive military presence in our territory, the Minister of the Interior has just announced that he will deploy reinforcements of gendarmes there to which he promised barracks in every municipality of Kabylia. Is there a genocidal intention against the Kabyle people at the top of the Algerian State ? We are thus forced to believe that insecurity is carefully managed in this part of the country where Islamic terrorists who are foreigners have been walking-around during these last 15 years with complete impunity. The kidnappings of Kabyle businessmen have become a very lucrative industry, over twenty in three years. Terrorist false roadblocks, often set up within one hundred meters from the official checkpoints held by joint forces of the gendarmerie and the army, extort money from poor people in cars when they do not result in the killing of young draftees.

Economic Sabotage

The Algerian authorities have always sabotaged the economy of Kabylia to starve the people and reduced him to begging. This would facilitate the submission, alienation and the depersonalization of Kabylia. This sabotage is carried out through several practices :

 Obstructing public and private investment by refusing to approve projects for the creation of viable businesses and industries,

 Refusal to yield ground-bases needed for the setting-up of the factory or the company of services,

 Refusal of access to foreign exchange for imports of machine tools,

 Tax pressure which has always been unmatched elsewhere and through which, the Algerian power cleans out the capital gain to avoid its reinvestment, on the one hand, and forces the industrialists already established in Kabylia to relocate in other more lenient places, on the other hand.

Even agriculture has been targeted. In two years (2007-2008), fires set up by the gendarmes and military authorities have destroyed more than one million and five hundred thousand of olive trees whose mythical species is endemic, going back to millenniums, and which add up to the economy, health and pride of Kabylia.

Her forests (approximately 200 000 ha) have been subjected to arsons since more than twenty years ; however, the Algerian authorities have never expressed any concern regarding this situation since no serious measure is taken to prevent or put out the repetitive devastating fires. On the contrary, when flames lick houses, the servicemen usually prevent their owners from putting them out. The only years where our forests did not burn are the ones in the course of which Kabylia had chased away the gendarmes from its territory, during the events of the ‘black spring 2001-2003.”

The Demagogy of Algeria to the UNO

Being demagogic, Algeria subscribed to all the declarations of the UNO on human rights and even voted for that of September 13th, 2007 on the rights of the autochthonous peoples. On the ground, it violates all their dispositions.

With the support of the international community and the organs of United Nations in charge of the respect of the international pacts regarding social, economic and cultural rights, we hope to act together in order to put pressure on the Algerian power so that the Kabyle people would enjoy all his rights, that only a regional autonomy which he claims through the MAK can guarantee. The march which he organized for that purpose on April 20th of this year in Tizi-Wezzu and which gathered more than 20 000 demonstrators is an edifying proof.

I personally make an appeal to all the enlightened consciousnesses of the world to help this people of 10 million souls, who, even in a situation of self-defense, prefers a political solution, regional autonomy, to a military solution.

The autonomy solution is one which could settle many conflicts in the world including those of Afghanistan, Kenya, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Somalia or, closer to us, that which opposes Algeria, through Polisario, to Morocco which, these last years, proposes with wisdom a regional autonomy for the strip of the Sahara, formerly a Spanish colony.

Having been at the forefront of Algeria in its struggle for its national liberation, Kabylia proudly assumes the same role for many people in the world who encounter problems of denial of existence and identity and cultural oppression.

New York, the Palace of United Nations, on 26/05/2009

Ferhat Mehenni
President of the Mouvement for the Autonomy of Kabylia (MAK)