Taking a Stand for Algeria

Abstract

Concerning the crisis which Algeria experiences today, only the Algerians can find political solutions. Yet these cannot be born in the isolation of the country. Everybody recognizes the complexity of the situation; diverging analyses and perspectives can legitimately be expressed about its and developments. Nevertheless, an agreement can be reached on a few points of principle. First of all, to reaffirm that any solution must be a civil one. The recourse to armed violence to defend or conquer power, terrorism, repression, torture and executions, murders and kidnappings, destruction, threats against the life or security of persons, these can only ruin the possibility that is still within Algeria's reach in order to build its own democracy and the conditions of its economic development. It is the condemnation by all of the practices of terrorism and repression which will thus begin to open a space for the confrontation of each and everyone's analyses, in the respect of differences. Proposals will be made to increase the number of acts of solidarity in France and elsewhere. Some initiatives are required without delay to make public opinion sensitive to the tragedy, to underscore the responsibility of governments and international financial institutions, to further the support of all for the democratic demands. I am asked to be brief, I will be. When I ask, as I will do, in the name of whom and in the name of what we speak here, I would simply like to let some questions be heard, without contesting or provoking anybody. In the name of whom and of what are we gathered here? And whom do we address? These questions are not abstract, I insist on this-and I insist that they engage first of all only me. For several reasons. Due to decency or modesty first, of course, and because of a concern about what an Appeal like ours may contain in both strengths and weaknesses. However generous or just it may be, an Appeal-- particularly when it resonates from here, from the walls of this Parisian auditorium, that is, for some of us, not for all precisely, but for many of us, when it is thus cast from far-I always fear that such an Appeal, however legitimate and well-meaning it may be, may still contain, in its very eloquence, too much authority; and I fear that as such it also defines a place of arbitration (and there is indeed one in our Appeal, I will say something about it later). In its apparent neutrality in arbitration, such an Appeal runs the risk of containing a lesson, an implicit lesson, whether it be a lesson learnt, or worse, a lesson given. So it is better to say it, it is better not to hide it from ourselves. Above all, decency is required when one risks matching a few words to such a real tragedy about which the Appeal from the ICSAI and the League of Human Rights rightly underlines two characteristics: 1. The entanglement (the very history of the premises, of the origins and of the developments which have led to what looks like a terrifying deadlock and to the entwined sharing of responsibilities in this matter, in Algeria as well as outside); which implies that the time of the transformation and the coming of this democracy, the response to the Algerian democratic demand mentioned several times in the Appeal, this time for democracy will be long, discontinuous, difficult to gather into the act of a single decision, into a dramatic reversal which would respond to the Appeal. It would be irresponsible to believe or to make believe the opposite. This long time for democracy, we will not even be able to gather it in Algeria. Things will have to take place elsewhere too. None of the autonomy of Algerians is removed by such a serious reminder. Even if we could doubt this and even if we kept dreaming of such a reversal in the course of events, the very time of this meeting would be enough to remind us of it. Indeed, we are here after the so-called reconciliation talks, that is, after a failure or a simulacrum, a disaster at any rate so sadly foreseeable, if not calculated, which sketches, as if negatively, the dream of the impossible which we can neither abandon nor believe in. …