Pride! Here are a people, first democracy in the world, expresses the desire and willingness to help and support the kabylian question.
Dear friends, let me explain to you, in some words, the kabylian question. The kabylian question is summarized in this willingness of our people to be free because he feels to be in possession of a proper genius which appears under a form of a society, a civilization. We have our own culture, our own sciences and arts different from the rest of Algeria.
Ethnically, the Kabylians are Amazigh (Berbers) autochthonous people of North Africa. Berber country or Tamazgha, historical territory of Amazigh people which extends from the Siwa Oasis in Egypt till the canary islands in the Atlantic ocean, from the Mediterranean sea till the north of Mali. This region has undergone since the antiquity a multitude of invaders from Phoenicians to Europeans especially French. But, among all those who occupied this land, the Arab invasion is the one which has changed for a long time and irreparably the destiny of this region. Kabylia will always be irredentist; she will always have her own history within the whole North Africa. Although, sometimes, she is nominally subject to an occupying force, she is never subdued for all that to its administration requirements. It was France that put an end to Kabylia independence in 1857 and definitively subdued her in 1871 in the aftermath of the defeat of kabylians widespread rebellion.
Starting from this date, the kabylians will be considered as muslims, the French administration will no more make a difference, except in very few exceptions, between arab and kabylian. It was the kabylians who were the kingpin of north African separatist nationalism. Messali whom the official propaganda presents as Algerian nationalism father is in truth recruited by kabylians in order to win over the algerian arabs to fight together for the independence. After his meeting with the Emir Chekib Arselan, the defender of pan Arab ideology, Messali will become mortal enemy of Kabylians. The pan arab ideology will be the ideology of all algerian arabs since that period till today.This ideology is summarized as follow; the Arabs constitute one nation which extends from Persian gulf from the East to the Atlantic ocean from the west. At one point in their history and because of successive knocks from foreign enemy powers, they lost their cohesion. Today the duty of each arab is to strive for the recovery of their past glory by eliminating any entity which can be an obstacle or in opposition to the resurrection of the mythical arab nation. The Kabylians with their existence too as a people speaking a language other than Arabic and descend from other ancestors than arabs, surely constitute a danger for the arab nation resurgence. Therefore, one must fight them or dissolve them in the future big nation. Meanwhile, they should be denied to have the quality of being algerians. For the Ulemas, aggressive and chauvinistic arabs, «the kabylians will be algerians only when they stop whispering this incorrect language which scratches the ears».
The first misunderstanding between algeria and kabylia happened in 1949 during the crisis called berber crisis when the algerians were bloodily opposed to Algerian Algeria (option defended by Kabylians of the Algerian national movement which is summarized as follow: Berbers, Jews or Arabs are all Algerians and must fight together for the national independence) the rupture happened in 1963, in the aftermath of decolonization when more than 400 kabylians were killed.
Since the independence, we, the kabylians have been in the front line of all emancipating fights in Algeria. We have fought for human rights, the gender equality, the freedom of belief or the linguistic pluralism… the response of algerian government has always been violent with us. Yet, the worst is that we have never or hardly ever had the support and even the sympathy of other Algerians. These last have always considered us as completely different citizens. We verified this at our expense during what we call the black spring of 2001. More than 126 young kabylians were killed by the algerian armed forces. According to an official report all the victims were killed with explosive bullets, the shooters targeted the head or the rib cage, so, as per the same report the shooters aimed to fire and not to maintain order as some want to make it believed. The Algerians always disposed to support the Palestinian or any other Arab cause, showed no support for us the Kabylians.
The Kabylians, tired of the Algerian citizens apathy and mainly from the repetitive violence of algerian government, decided to take control of their destiny. In June 5th 2001 the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylia was born and will claim status of a wide autonomy for Kabylia. After more than ten years of existence punctuated by peaceful actions in order to get the algerian government negotiates with Kabylians the terms of this project, we choose to internationalize the kabylian question. In 2010 the Provisional Government of Kabylia, led by Ferhat MEHENNI, was created in exile. In 2011the MAK convention chose to claim the self-determination of Kabylia.
My dear friends, this is, briefly, our history and our hopes. The kabylian question is, to summarize, the willingness of a people, several times millenary, to recover his freedom and his dignity.
It is important for us that the Norwegian people are interested in our sufferings. The experience showed to us that this people of peace and freedom have always helped all the world citizens who are in distress. We dare hope that the hand you hold out to us is the one which will lead us towards freedom. A good omen, it is on this May 17th, bicentenary of your constitution that I write you these few clumsy but sincere lines.
Muh TAHECCAT
President Advisor for the MAK
Movement for the autodetermination of Kabylia
17 – 05 – 2014
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