The heads of the accepted political parties will be included in the festivities. There will be the ‘dinosaurs’ inflated by electoral cheating, to the other ‘strumpfs’ whose ‘microscopic’ size has not moved a micron, and who a certain respectable lawyer described as ‘decorative’. The complete ‘boulitical’ spectrum will be present, from the secular extremist, defender of a republic ashamed of its people, to the arrogant islamist, imbued with his own personality, who having introduced so many innovations to the Algerian political vocabulary, animated by a fervent political opportunism, has invented a new type of ‘anti-establishment participation’, or rather ‘opposition by zealous support’, a recipe that would make the Swiss ‘magic formula’ jealous.
You will obviously meet the General Secretary of the FLN overrun by militant opportunists of the 25th hour who bear merely the initials of the party, and would be incapable of explaining the Declaration of November 1st 1954, even if they were aware of its content. Not forgetting the president of the party in power, the party of total power, that which effectively acts in the name of the all powerful club of putschist generals.
You will certainly have the occasion to get to know the president of a human rights observatory, established to alleviate the short-sightedness of the system in this area, and which since its inception has quickly showed its chronic blindness to the point of enumerating the victims of terror and repression in diminishing numbers.
It is also predictable that they will parade in front of you journalists who excel in the subtle art of diffusing official communications and at the same time preserving their ‘independent’ status, as well as directors of a multitude of socio-professional associations, cultural, trade-union, employers’, human rights, feminist, sport etc. etc. to the presidents of the Algerian lottery and the ‘Pari Sportif’.
They all will come to expound their point of view, to explain the solution they advocate to resolve the Algerian crisis. They will all say the same thing. The concordance of their statements, the convergence of their ideas will leave you disconcerted. They all will bring you the same truth – the only one tolerated – that you will have already heard countless times from the mouths of their men in the street. A truth that will be repeated so often that you will finally be able to repeat it blindfolded, to announce it upon your return as convinced apostles.
It is predictable that ‘this truth’ will be well formulated, presented in a subtle manner, wrapped in theoretic elaborations and intellectual constructions. You will be entitled to history, geography and political strategy lessons. You will be reminded of the geo-strategic character of Algeria and the regional, indeed global, dimensions of the ‘green peril’ will be emphasized. They will not feel uncomfortable in recalling history, knowing it will stir strong emotions in some of you, by making parallels with Nazi Germany, Italy under Mussolini, Spain under Franco and Portugal under Salazar.
Excellencies,
It is predictable that it will be difficult for you to hear the other voice of Algeria. That of its banished children, denied the spoken word because they committed the crime of imagining a truth other than that believed by the government. You will have great difficulty in meeting the spokesmen, and women, of this other truth. And when you have the chance, it will be a furtive meeting. It is however they who can colour the black and white image of Algeria that you will have been given. It is they who will be able to put some nuances into the binary landscape that will have been depicted. It is they who will be able to correct the over-simplified and reducing description of the crisis that you will have received.
These Algerians, lady and gentlemen members of the Delegation, are male and female politicians such as Louisa Hannoune, Abdelhamid Mehri and Benyoucef Benkhadda, human rights defenders such as the lawyers Abdennour Ali-Yahia and Mahmoud Khelili, journalists such as Salima Ghezali. They will teach you that in Algeria the black is not as black and the white is not as white as one is lead to believe.
These Algerians are also those you will meet in the street, but will hesitate to talk. Those who you will not hear speak in the presence of officials because they become tetanized by the sight of uniforms. Those who dare only look at you. Those who you can trust by their non-verbal language. You will be able to decode their bodily expressions and read the visual signal they will send to you. By the lines on their faces you will be able to guess the extent of their drama. In their eyes you will be able to read their suffering. If you were allowed to listen to them alone, and if you were to hear them, they would tell you how many of their relatives they had unjustly lost. They would tell about the daily humiliations they suffer, the extra-judiciary detentions, the torture, the rape, the summary executions, the collective massacres, the disappearances and many other attacks on human dignity and on fundamental rights of the individual that they have either experienced or witnessed. Failing listening, you would do well to look at them carefully. You will be able to scrutinize their forms and observe their clothing to understand to what point they live in economic misery. You will learn how they must fight to preserve an indecent survival minimum, because they have lost everithing, including the possibility to provide for the needs of their families and no longer dream of a decent life.
You will learn what it is like to be a man unable to educate his children, to provide them with treatment or simply to buy them milk. You will learn what it is like for a people to hay their dignity confiscated, to be lead to the lowest depths of poverty and inadequacy on the orders of the IMF and other moneylenders, and by a government which squanders the country’s wealth on over-arming and on private fortunes, to the applause of the Free World.
Excellencies,
Finally, my hopes and fears are shared with you. In addition I would like to wish you good luck because you must succeed in your mission for the Algerian people. This people which is at the moment denied not only justice, but also truth.
It is said, lady and gentlemen of the Delegation, that in a world where justice is unattainable, truth can be a temporary substitute. A return to civil peace in Algeria is virtually impossible if the truth as to what has happened, and is happening, is not said. The truth is the indispensable preliminary to any attempt at reconciliation. I hope with all my heart that you will take the first steps on the path to the truth in my country.
Abbas Aroua
20 July 1998
