Dr Kamel Eddine Fekhar dies fasting in Custody on May 28, Workers Party leader Louisa Hanoune and many other Activists under arrest by military, while Protest Continues
Kameleddine Fekhar, mort… sous nos yeux silencieux https://t.co/Cv88Xv1nDi
— Khaled Drareni (@khaleddrareni) May 29, 2019
Dr Kamel Eddine Fekhar was arrested on March 31 by the authority in the de facto military rule that is continuing in Algeria. He started hunger strike and became very weak. His health was already fragile and he undertook several hunger strikes in the past when he was arrested protesting government injustices. Rightly he was honoured there not only as a practising doctor but also, or more, as a human right activist. Sadly, he when his health was much deteriorated the military jail sent him to hospital and he died on May 28 at an age of 55 only; and what an irony, the hospital where he died is named after that great Dr (Psychiatrist) and Algerian Revolutionary Franz Fanon.
Louisa Hanoune, the Secretary General of Workers Party (PT, Parti des travailleurs, a party known to be Trotskyite communist) is also under military custody since May 9. And she is not alone. Nobody knows exactly how many or how many hundreds of activists and protestors are under arrest. But arresting Madame Hanoune is a signifier, it shows that the authority is not ready to spare anyone. Louisa Hanoune is the first woman in the Arab world to contest in a presidential election, that was in 2004, and in 2009 presidential election she got 4.22% vote to be the runners up, where Saïd Abdelaziz Bouteflika won for his third term with 90.24% votes, an election which many called fraudulent. PT is one of the major parties in Algeria. She is now under arrest, the military court accused her for plotting conspiracy against the military and the state. Many political parties together demanded immediate release of Louisa Hanoune.
Louisa Hanoune
Protests in Algeria started in second half of February this year when the president Saïd Bouteflika announced that he would run again for presidency for his fifth term in the ensuing vote. He is already 82, he suffered serious heart disease and spent several times in hospital, lost ability of speech at least for some time and etc. – people believe he cannot manage affairs. Moreover, people are disgruntled with clientele-nepotism, coteries and corruption. And the big wasteful spending he made – to build the largest mosque of Africa (or the world?) spending allegedly $4 billion (a French doctor satirically said that the president could have built 200 hospitals with this money)! With protests exacerbating Bouteflika purportedly retreated. Practically the Army generalissimo and bureaucrats are running the country as a country under military rule.
Every time such a protest happens the media talks about ‘youth protest’, ‘leaderless protest’, and so on, like “Youth lead the movement for change” reported BBC News in mid-April. The same way they did not highlight the Egyptian and Tunisian workers’ movement during 2011 like those in Gazl Al Mahalah and Alexandria in Egypt or Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia. We shall look into some news here. But before that a general picture: Each Friday hundreds of thousands protested. Last Friday, May 24, was the fourteenth Friday of protests, and police and military were over working to diffuse perhaps the largest protest yet happened. Police even was not allowing people to have their Iftar that evening in the GPO stairs, a very usual place for many people for their fast breaking in this month of Ramjan. Hundreds of thousands are protesting, Fridays being the biggest protest days. People are chanting angry slogans against army general Ahmed Gaid Salah. Army is keen for an early president election possibly on July first week. But main political forces and people too want an interim process and interim civilian government that will also review the constitution and look after the election.
UGTA (Union Générale des Travailleurs Algériens) is the biggest Trade Union in Algeria. It is informally controlled by the ruling party FLN, that is the party of Saïd Abdelaziz Bouteflika. This party is in the continuity of the force that once took a big role in the Algerian revolution. And also it was one of the forces (and the other main force was the military loyal to it) that fought against Islamist forces when the later tried to capture state after almost poised to winning ‘democratically’ a national election – the elections were not held after the first phase in fear that the very popular FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) would win the elections. (FIS won 54% votes in local body elections in 1990.) A hard-core Islamist armed group emerged in reaction to banning FIS. And civil war followed for years after years. Ultimately FLN and army became victorious and when Bouteflika assumed presidency in 1999 after president post was managed by pro-army persons, the civil war almost stopped.
UGTA is ‘under’ FLN control. But UGTA is composed of ‘people’, in this case ordinary workers, and they were also full of dissent like their fellow toiling countrymen. The New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) of France released a material, “Algérie: de la contestation dans l’UGTA et les grèves” on April 17, 2019 written by Hocine Guernane. There were general strikes in between march 10 and 14, there were marches. There were calls included ‘the departure of the system’, ‘reorganisation of UGTA’. This was started by the provincial union of Bejaia. Provincial UGTA bodies of Bejaïa, Tizi-Ouzou, Saïda, Tlemcen met in Algiers and signed a communiqué through which they reaffirmed their involvement in the popular movement “to the satisfaction of its demands” and “the building of a new republic” and they demanded the departure of UGTA chief Sidi Said and his national secretariat. In response Sidi Said and the leadership ordered expulsion of these local leaders. This only fuelled the movement. On April 10, members of the CEN (Central Executive Committee), supreme body between two congresses, the Provinces of Algiers, Blida, Tipaza, Médéa, Brouira, Tizi-Ouzou, total 32 out of 47 members, wrote a statement in which they declared to support the popular movement and denounce secretary general Sidi Said. Afterwards Federation of Metallurgy and Federation of Electronics formally joined the workers’ protests. On April 11 at Bejaia, under a heavy rain, thousands of workers assembled and shouted slogans – Sidi Said get Out – UGTA is not your property it is ours. Later UGTA local bodies decided to make a show in front of the UGTA headquarters.
Marche de Tizi Ouzou #Systéme_Dégage
مسيرات حاشدة بولاية تيزي وزو#Algerie_manifestations#لا_لتاجيل_نعم_للرحيل#يتنحاو_ڨاع#Systéme_Dégage pic.twitter.com/fjD2oJl6ST— Ali Naak Photographe (@AliNaak15) March 25, 2019
It remains to be seen what happens in Algeria in near future, and how toiling people protest in the coming Fridays. Recently in the NPA website we saw a FB post of Mahmoud Rechidi which tells (in easy translation) ‘In Algeria 70% of the working population earns less than 100 € a month. Minimum wage at Algeria is lowest in the region. But there are mad people who say this is not the time to talk social issues’. Hundreds of migrants fleeing to Europe die of boat capsize. Algeria cannot continue like this. [First edition of this was written on 29th May and was published in Frontier Weekly online on 30-5-2019; this updated version, with photographs and their twitter sources, is dated 31-5-2019.]
The author is an activist who writes on political and socioeconomic issues and also on environmental issues. Some of his articles are published in Frontier Weekly. He lives in West Bengal, India. Presently he is a research worker. He can be reached at [email protected]
