Algeria: After the Electoral Farce of September 7, the Repression Intensifies

Forced to publicly expose the electoral fraud that secured Abdelmadjid Tebboune a second term as head of the Algerian state, the current regime seems to be taking its revenge on the people who have rejected it more than once.

By Hichem ABOUD

Arrests, intimidation, extradition requests for opponents abroad, and bans on all activities for the few opposition parties struggling to survive at all costs.

A few days after Tebboune’s inauguration for his re-election as president of the republic, the Douera stadium, in the southern suburbs of Algiers, was the scene of violent clashes between riot police and the supporters of Algeria’s most popular club, Mouloudia Club of Algiers, the oldest Algerian club, born in 1921, long before the first political party of the national movement, the Algerian People’s Party (PPA), which called for the country’s independence.

Facing the second leg of their match against the Tunisian club, US Monastir, as part of the second preliminary round of the African Champions League, the Algerian club experienced a real nightmare in its new stadium, which bears the emblematic name of one of the heroes of the liberation war, Ali Ammar, known as Ali La Pointe.

In the age of online ticket sales, the supporters of Algeria’s oldest club were forced to endure the hell of long queues and scuffles in front of the ticket offices at the July 5 Stadium in Cheraga. They could not have imagined the worst that awaited them on match day.

Unbelievable but true. For 50,000 spectators, the organizers decided to open only one entrance. This infuriated supporters who had come to celebrate with their tifos, flags, banners, and emblems. They demanded the opening of other gates. Their request was ignored, and the supporters then began chanting political slogans hostile to the government, especially repeating, “Civil state, not military state.” The reaction of the gendarmerie forces was immediate. A real beating rained down on the supporters. Amateur footage showed horrific scenes. “Even Israeli soldiers are not as violent and cruel with Palestinians as the Algerian gendarmes were with Mouloudia supporters,” one observer noted. The clashes ended outside the stadium with one death, a young man in his twenties, more than a hundred injured, and 14 arrests.

This was just the first round of inexplicable violent repression. The second round took place at the end of the match inside the stadium. As the match, won by Mouloudia of Algiers 2-0, securing their qualification for the next rounds, was winding down, tear gas bombs were fired by the gendarmes from the stadium stands. Three of them landed on the pitch. Players from both teams, referees, and everyone on the sidelines were in tears. In the stands, the gendarmes did not limit themselves to their batons; they tore out plastic chairs and threw them at the players. It was a true nightmare with no explanation.

The public authorities took no disciplinary action against the gendarmerie responsible for this unjustified violence, nor did they order any investigation. On the contrary, they punished the Algerian club with a match behind closed doors, claiming “the need to wait for tempers to cool.”

Women Brave the Struggle

For activists, the ruling power, to better act in complicit silence, began by hacking the Facebook page of the National Committee for the Liberation of Detainees (CNLD). This page regularly reported arrests and prison sentences handed down by Algerian courts across the country. Naturally, the Algerian press, whether private or public, remains silent on these subjects.

Thus, we will no longer hear about militants kidnapped or arrested by security forces. Only a few voices, with a little time before their arrest, can post messages on social networks about what might happen to them. It was in this way that we learned of the imprisonment of the “brave woman of the desert,” Abla Guemari, before she was arrested at her workplace on September 27 by police officers. The investigating judge of the court in the city of Touggourt ordered that her judicial supervision be converted into preventive detention. Abla Guemari is accused of “advocating terrorism” for denouncing the precarious and miserable conditions in which the populations of the southern region, Algeria’s breadbasket with its oil, gas, and iron and gold minerals, live.

During the same period, in the mountains of Kabylia, on September 15, four (4×4) gendarmerie vehicles came to the village of Wafia, a young woman who refuses to submit to injustice, as she declares. “The gendarmes searched the house, broke the door of my room, and conducted searches, room by room,” she wrote on her Facebook page.

Djamila Bentouis, sentenced to three years in prison for composing a song dedicated to the “Hirak,” continues to serve her sentence. The Algerian regime has turned a deaf ear to the call of UN experts, who asked the Algerian judiciary to annul the three-year prison sentence.

Djamila is not the only one to go to prison for a song that did not please the rulers. Long before her, rapper Bilel Hemila, alias “Bilal Double Kanon,” was behind bars. After serving his sentence, he left the country like thousands of other young people, in a makeshift boat, seeking asylum in Spain, where he currently lives as a political refugee.

On Monday, September 30, young Djenadi Ahmed Kamel, alias DAK, a rapper from the city of Annaba in the east of the country, was arrested and imprisoned. His crime? A song denouncing the ruling power.

Political parties, or what remains of them, are going through very difficult times. The Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), which survived the purge led by its former president Saïd Saadi, who emptied it of all its founding figures, is regaining some strength. But it is quickly called to order. Banned from activities during the electoral period, it continues to suffer under the rule of a regime that is extremely sensitive to any opposition. Its president, Athmane Mazouz, was informed of a ban on organizing a debate at the Bejaïa theater scheduled for October 5. The refusal came without any justification.

These are just some facets of the repression that has befallen Algerians over the last ten days. The rest is yet to come…

Song of “The Voice of the People” by DAK:

Video in solidarity against injustice with Wafiya: