RIGHTS: EU Urged To Stop Supporting The Algerian Regime

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Julio Godoy

PARIS, Feb 13 2001 (IPS) - European Union (EU) should stop supporting the regime of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika for allowing the Algerian army to commit atrocities against the civilian population, a group of Algerian, French, and Spanish intellectuals said in Paris.

The appeal, published in the French newspaper Le Monde, was signed by social scientists, lawyers, historians and journalists from the three countries.

It followed testimonies by a former officer in the Algerian army and survivors of massacres officially attributed to Muslim rebels, but allegedly committed by the military.

In the book ‘Sale Guerre’ (Dirty War), published last week in Paris, Habib Souaidia, now 31, and refugee in France, tells how he volunteered for the Algerian army in 1989. Souaidia affirms that he was a member of the Unit of Special Operations, and that he took part in several massacres, organised and executed by the army between 1992 and 1995.

“I have seen army colleagues burn alive teenagers,” Souaidia writes. “I have seen soldiers disguise themselves as Muslim rebels and commit mass executions. I have seen colonels execute … Muslim rebels. I have seen so many horrendous things, which are simply abject crimes against human dignity.”

Souaidia backs up his allegations with dates, names and villages, in which mass killings took place, and that always were imputed to Muslim rebels.

The former army officer demands in his book that the Algerian government allow an enquiry on the massacres by an international investigation commission.

The scholars, who signed the appeal, include social scientist Fatiha Talahite, lawyer Brahim Taouti, and journalist Salima Melah. All of them are Algerians who now live and work in France.

Involved in the campaign also are the internationally respected social scientist Pierre Bourdieu, who lived in Algeria in the 1970s and now teaches at the prestigious College de France, historian Pierre Vidal Naquet, and Alain Joxe, director of the High School of Social Research in Paris.

Naquet was the first French scholar to reveal the extent of the use of torture by the French army in Algeria during the war of independence in the late 1950s.

The Spanish professor Gema Martin Munoz, of the Autonomous University of Madrid, also supports the demand to suspend relations with the Algerian regime.

Their appeal coincides with the official visit to Algeria by French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine on Tuesday.

In France, the Algerian soldier’s testimony is seen as credible. Le Monde affirms that members of his family, who still remain in Algeria, were visited, after the publication of the book, by army officers who apparently wanted to harass them.

According to another French newspaper, Liberation, Souaidia’s testimony has prompted the Algerian government to further crackdown on the opposition. Liberation reveals that the small business owned by the Souaidia’s family in the eastern city of Tebessa was destroyed by a group of armed men last week.

The Algerian army has since 1992 been fighting a bloody civil war against rebels of the Islamic Salvation Front (ISF). The war began immediately after the army suspended an electoral process, which the ISF was poised to win.

Since then the Algerian army have enjoyed unconditional political, financial and military support from the European Union.

According to human rights groups, some 200,000 people have been killed during the civil war. Another 30,000 have disappeared, and up to 500,000 have left the country, mostly for France. The majority of the war’s victims are civilians.

The scholars also quoted the testimony of a survivor of the massacre of Bentalha, near the capital Algiers.

On Sep 22, 1997, a group of 200 armed men, who appeared to be Muslim rebels, killed some 400 inhabitants of the village. Among the victims were women and children.

The massacre was officially attributed to Muslim rebels. But Nesroulah Yous, an inhabitant of Bentalha, and who survived the carnage, accuses the army. He now lives in France as refugee.

In the book, “Who killed at Benthala?”, published last October, Yous affirms that army units surrounded the village while the “Muslims” committed the atrocity. The survivor’s testimony includes other massacres attributed to Muslims, but probably committed by army units disguised as rebels.

The author of the book, Algerian journalist Salima Mellah, who also signed the appeal, called on the EU to stop collaboration with the Algerian government.

In their appeal, addressed to the French government and to the EU, the scholars assert that the testimonies in those two books are only a small part of a heavy dossier of accusations against the army and the government in Algeria. “To quote only the atrocities that concern the European Union, we name the assassinations of French monks in Tibehirine and of Italian seamen as well as the execution of Monsignor Claverie,” the scholars declared.

In all these killings, the scholars say, the implication of the Algerian army and secret service has been “exhaustively documented” by human rights groups. They also add the findings of British and French justice departments that have revealed that terrorist acts in France and in Britain, officially attributed to Muslim rebels, were actually committed by Algerian army officers.

“On the view of such crimes, the French and European co- operation with Algeria cannot longer be seen as the normal relation between states, but simply as complicity with crimes against humanity,” conclude the scholars.

The French government has not reacted to the allegations. A spokesperson at the Foreign Ministry in Paris said France will study the petition along with the European Union. The official also said that France will raise the issue of violence in Algeria in April at the United Nations.

“But we will do it in co-ordination with our European partners. Europe will speak with one voice about it,” he said.