RIGHTS-ALGERIA: Activists Criticise Inaction Over Massacres

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Apr 22 1998 (IPS) - The lack of action taken by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva on Algeria’s recent massacres is another sign that the Algerian government is under no pressure to improve the situation in the country, say human rights groups.

Activists say Algeria’s military-backed government should be compelled to allow an international inquiry into the massacres in which at least 70,000 people have died – killings which have grown more horrific since last summer. But the Geneva Commission has no intention of voting on any resolution requiring an Algeria inquiry before it ends its current session Thursday, they say.

“If you can’t manage to get Algeria on the agenda…then there’s something very seriously wrong,” Joe Stork, advocacy director for Human Rights Watch/Middle East (HRW), told a discussion forum on Algeria at New York’s Columbia University.

“Algeria was the main topic in the hallways and the cafeterias” when the latest Commission session opened last month – but in the meetings, it couldn’t be mentioned,” Stork noted.

“There is strong evidence that government security forces and militias are actively engaged in the massacres,” claimed Abderrahim Sabir, chairman of the North African coordination group for Amnesty International-USA. “Yet the international community continues to adopt a soft approach.”

Even moderate appeals for peace between President Liamine Zeroual’s regime and the Islamist forces of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and the hardline Armed Islamic Group (GIA) have been rebuffed, Sabir said. “(U.N. Secretary-General Kofi) Annan was rebuked for the mere suggestion that it might be time for Algeria to engage in (peace) talks.”

John Entelis a professor at New York’s Fordham University, argued that, at a time when international involvement in Algeria’s crisis is becoming more crucial, the Zeroual government is successfully fending off any outside inquiry or criticism.

Algiers is being left alone, other analysts said, because it has convinced governments that it is struggling to prevent the threat of an Islamist takeover by the FIS – or even by the brutal GIA. The current government initially took power in a 1992 following the cancellation of elections in which the FIS, then a moderate Islamic party, had already won the first round and looked ready to sweep the runoffs. Since then, Islamist groups have been fighting continuously with Algeria’s armed forces and paramilitary ‘civil defense’ groups, with all sides accused of killings.

“So-called Islamic terrorists are murdering thousands of innocent young people,” U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson declared in Geneva last month. “Women and children are not being spared from this unspeakable horror, with young women often being taken hostage and held in cruel and inhuman captivity.”

Richardson told the Commission that “the paramount need is for a credible, independent verification of the facts,” including visits by U.N. special human rights rapporteurs.

However Stork maintained the United States asked Algerian officials about the consequences of actually introducing any resolutions in Geneva before pushing for such steps – and when Algeria resisted, he added, Washington ended its drive for a resolution.

“Did the United States ask Cuba for permission (to introduce a resolution on human rights)?” Stork asked. “I can assure you it did not.”

Some Algerians do not favour an outside inquiry because, they argue, some human-rights groups have been one-sided in their criticisms of the government. Anissa Helie, an Algerian who works at the International Women’s Human Rights Law Clinic at Rutgers University, told IPS that Amnesty and HRW have been “extremely biased – their reports have focused just on government responsibility.”

Instead, she claimed, international attention should focus on ending support for the Islamists. “The government doesn’t have clean hands, that’s for sure,” she said. “But we cannot mix that with the fact that the authors of the massacres are the GIA, (who are) associated with the FIS.”

Abdelhamid Brahimi, who was prime minister of Algeria from 1984 to 1988, counters that any arguments that place the blame on the Islamists are “simplistic and not quite true.” Brahimi told the Columbia University panel this week that he believed the Algerian military killed President Mohammed Boudiaf in 1992 – a murder blamed on the FIS – and has intentionally obstructed investigations of most other atrocities.

“There should be an independent inquiry commission,” Brahimi, now director-general of the Centre for Maghreb Studies in London, said. “If the Algerian government refuses, it means they have something to hide.”

Nevertheless, Algeria has put most of its critics on the defensive in recent months. Ramtane Lamamra, Algeria’s ambassador to Washington, sharply scolded a recent HRW report on ‘disappearances’ in his country. In a letter, he branded the report a ” new attempt intended to amplify the exclusively politically-motivated propaganda led by those who have made it their occupation to relentlessly distort (sic) the realities of today’s Algeria.”

The Algerian government also has tried to remove the non- governmental organisation credentials granted to Amnesty International by the U.N. Economic and Social Council, Sabir noted.

Even U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson has not been immune from the government’s backlash. According to the Financial Times (of London), Algeria blocked minor budgetary matters for her office last year “in pique at what it considered to be outside meddling.”

Algeria has argued that the push for a human rights inquiry into the massacres violates national sovereignty. However, countered Brahimi, the country has allowed its economic policies to be determined largely by the International Monetary Fund, and its security forces to be trained by France. “Where is the sovereignty?” he asked.