Soliciting UNESCO is not fortuitous. The Organization is the only one of United Nations bodies tasked with education in all its aspects. Designed as a roadmap, UNESCO’s framework for action promotes full respect for the use of the mother tongue in teaching and learning, which is of particular importance to indigenous peoples.
After having set up the disastrous situation, in which the Algerian colonial power has plunged Kabylia, the President of Anavad invites UNESCO to use its prerogatives to protect the linguistic and cultural rights of the Kabyle people. And he also asked to examine the cases of violations of these same rights in Kabylie by Algeria for more than half a century.
]]>The Kabylian football team: “We will win independence with our feet”
While a march of Kabyles de France is held this Sunday, April 15 in Paris, focus on the national team of Kabylia. Or when football and politics are played on the same ground.
Usually, the wars of independence are engaged on the barricades and are regulated with Molotov cocktails. Since the withdrawal of France from the country in 1962, the Kabyles of Algeria have not escaped the rule. Sentiment of declassification, discrimination, the Berber minority (17% of the population) has gradually poured into the insurgency, to the point of descending by the thousands in the streets of Tizi-Ouzou, the regional capital, but also Algiers. Still with the same sad result: a violent repression of the regime and a bloody record for the demonstrators, as in the “Berber Spring” of 1980 (32 dead) or the “Black Spring” of 2001 (126 dead). This story, which has marked generations of Kabyles in Algeria, is commemorated Sunday, April 15 in the streets of Paris, during a march where are expected thousands of members of this diaspora very large in France.
But in parallel, the story of Kabyle claims is written on another field: that of football, with the creation a year ago of a “national team Kabyle”. Who will participate, next May, in the World Cup of stateless people of CONIFA . CONIFA is a kind of underground alter ego of the FIFA, an association that brings together the football federations of minorities not recognized by its big sister. Among the other 15 candidates for the title of champion, Kabylie will face the Korean United of Japan, Padania or the Kiribati Islands. A surprising cast made of teams of unknown pedigree, who all share the same desire: to promote their cultural particularity and their identity through the football time of a competition.
Kabyle side, the ambition is even greater, since Aksel Bellabaci, the man behind the project, speaks of “struggle for independence by football.” Aksel Ballabaci is Secretary of State for Sport of the Kabyle Provisional Government in Exile in Paris, an organization supported by pro-independence activists on the one hand – and of course, unpopular in the eyes of Algiers. Look Humphrey Bogart style and impeccable jacket, he receives on the terrace of one of the many Kabyle bars of the capital he attends with other activists of the cause: “For me who am a big fan of football, everything is part of the 2014 World Cup where Algeria had shone . While the team was made up of 70% Kabyle, the speech of the players and coaches was constantly: “We represent the Arabs”. We Berbers have been orphaned. This sentence hurt enough for me to tell myself that I was going to do everything to put together a team that would play on our behalf. ”
2014, it is also the moment when Ferhat Mehenni, emblematic Kabyle singer became president of the temporary government in exile, discovers the existence of the CONIFA. He then proposes to Aksel Bellabaci to go to Kabylie to form a team to play the qualifying campaign in 2017. “At first, nobody believed it, rewinds Aksel. Everyone was saying to me, “What is this bullshit?” But thanks to my contacts in the local clubs, I was able to set up a team quickly “. The matches, organized against small groups of the region, are played in a spy film atmosphere, for fear of arousing the suspicions of the Algerian police: “We had to be very discreet. I had brought back the jerseys I had made in France. The players gave them back to me at the end of the match. Nobody took a photo except me, and I kept them preciously until the official announcement of our qual ‘and our participation. Detail that does not lack of salt: the Kabylia team learned that they were selected for the CONIFA World Cup the same day they learned the elimination of Algeria at the official World Cup, in Russia.
From a far-fetched project, the participation of the Kabyle team in the CONIFA World Cup has become a reality. And this is surely what has awakened the concerns of the Algerian power because, a few days later, Aksel Bellabaci has seen several black SUVs with smoked windows. “It was in my parents’ village 10 kilometers from Tizi-Ouzou . I had hardly recovered from the party we had organized to celebrate the qualification when I realized that they were encircling my house and that some were even entering the garden!” says Aksel, half-amused and saddened by the turn of events. Difficult to imagine the formidable Algerian police deploy so much effort to apprehend a man in the aftermath of the evening. However, that’s what happened that morning, in an atmosphere “assault GIGN”. “It says a lot about the importance of our project,” continues Aksel Bellabaci, who then underwent 9 hours of close interrogation by some 20 police officers. “Everyone had his technique, one tried to corrupt me by offering me a job, the other threatened my family … But I did not give in, and they finally released me under the pressure from the inhabitants of my home village demonstrating in front of the police station”. Since then, each of his returns has been punctuated by clashes with the police, as in March, when police prevented a conference on the future CONIFA World Cup.
Despite the difficulties, Aksel Bellabaci is now in the process of forming the Kabyle team for the competition. Nearly 160 players have applied to take part in the adventure. Among them “an 18-year-old player in a Ligue 1 club,” he announces proudly without saying more. The staff of the future team keeps secret the names of the players to avoid any potential pressure from the Algerian government. One of them nevertheless agreed to speak openly. Kouceila Saidouni, 22, presents himself as a “young oppressed in Algeria”. Installed in France for two years, this young man who is good at expressing himself, plays for CS Berbères Villetaneuse, where he continues to play football despite the disappointments experienced in the past; Because Kouceila posted brilliant stats in his club in Kabylie – 40 goals in 22 games for his last season – without anyone ever offered him a contract. “This is the problem in Algeria, it works more by relationship than skills. That’s what made me want to play with the Kabyle national team, because I’m convinced that football is a powerful weapon, and that we can win our independence with our feet. But whether I’m selected or not, the mere fact that this team exists, is a victory. ”
Kabylia has a long tradition of winning football matches. For beyond the “Kabyle national team” which is preparing to write its history, the JSK (Youth Sports Kabyle), the club of Tizi-Ouzou, has always been a “sounding box of sports aspirations Kabyle”, pose Youcef Zirem, author of a History of Kabylie. For supporters of the most titled club in Algeria have always challenged the central power from the stands: brandishing Kabyle flags in full Berber Spring in 1980 or whistling the national anthem for the final of the Cup of Algeria in 1990. The independence singer Lounès Matoub, a great Kabyle figure, even wrote a song about the club before being murdered in 1998 by terrorists – according to the Algerian state, by the Algerian state – according to Kabyle independence and by Algerian generals – according to a documentary Canal +). For Kabylia, participation in the World Cup of the stateless people will be another important forum of expression. Even if nothing has been done yet, as Askel Bellabaïci points out, “I’m sure they’re going to try something to prefent us to participate. It’s crazy all they can do to prevent us from playing football. For Kabylie more than for any other team, the slogan of Baron de Coubertin has never been so topical: the important thing is really to participate.
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According to the official history of Islam written by Catholic and Muslim fanatics, the Sarazens were those who were cited as the conquerors who spread the Islamic faith in the 700 hundreds. A faith whose sacred book would only exist a century later.
It seems that the Europeans took ingredients they had at home and made a great story for Islam. Let’s see whom the sarazins were in the middle ages.
In his book “The Sarazins were from the area” (Les Sarazins étaient du coin), the French historian Joseph Henriet demonstrates that those whom history has named Sarazens were not Arabs. They would be, more generally, pagans, peoples who had not converted to Christianity, and assimilated to Muslims by a confusion due to the idea, formerly believed, that Islam adapted certain traits estimated prior to Christianity. Heresy was generally regarded as a superficial garment given to old beliefs; this was also the case of Arianism, which had been adopted by the Burgundians. In the heart of the Alps, according to Henriet, different heretics and pagans could live side by side, but at the end of the day, they were no stranger to the area: it was a native people, settled in places since the beginning. They are those whom we today call Ligures, whose language was no doubt close to Basque. In opposite from the Allobroges, they remained at the top of the mountains or in the depths of the valleys.
According to Henriet, the description of “Sarazins” by medieval authors refers to indigenous peoples, not Eastern invaders.
These natives would have preserved for a long time, in the Middle Ages, their pagan cults, their way of mountainlife, and also their habits of plundering the convoys of travelers when their productions were insufficient. Christian writers, living in the cities, would therefore have claimed them to be “Sarazins”, referring both to the terror they inspired, and to their ignorance of the Christian religion.
One day, perhaps soon, thanks to the rapid progress of genetic sience, honorable scientists should be able to determine with certainty whom the Sarazins of the Alps were. In the meantime, Joseph Henriet’s hypothesis seems to be particularly convincing …
]]>Because of the criminal policy of France that builds and supports an Arab-Muslim world, there are two types of minorities in Algeria: Imazighen and women.
A minority is not calculated by the proportion of people who constitute it, but according to their weight (political, cultural …).
The term “minority” is used by euphemistically to refer to a social, ethnic, political, sexual or religious group of people dominated by a culture, politics, ethnic or religion who is dominant and domineering.
So it is actually a power relationship that one here can observe.
In the apartheid time in South Africa, the black population was many more, but was dominated at every level by the white population that was much less numerous. But this small number of whites held all the power, and were acting as if they were the majority.
With minority you should not immediately think proportion of people, but who have the political and cultural power. In Algeria, Arab-Islam is dominant, and has all power, and serves as a majority. This situation is even more visible in Morocco where Imazighen are a larger population
]]>To recall the Polisario is supported by Algeria and aims to establish an Arab state on Amazigh land. Amazigh people of Western Sahara are also heavily repressed, especially in the Tindouf camps maintained by Algeria for the purpose.
Thus, following the serious injuries inflicted on him by the pan-Arab Saharawi, Omar Khalik was hospitalized at the University Hospital of Marrakech. Unfortunately, he succumbed to his injuries yesterday Wednesday, January 27, according to the Amazigh Cultural Movement in Marrakech, bringing to the number of two Amasigh victims of the Polisario in Morocco University, especially in Marrakech and Agadir.
Moroccan Amazigh newspaper, Amazigh 24, further specifies the conditions for these murders, “the culprits are members of the pan-Arabist branch Sahrawi pro-Polisario, Polisario who propagate the ideology and support the building of an Arab Saharawi Republic on an Amazigh land, “says Yugerthen member of the Amazigh Cultural Cultural at Amazigh 24,
The Amazigh Cultural Movement, has also called for a “mobilization to neutralize these daechiens rampant in Moroccan universities and receive a double scholarship, just because they are Sahrawi Polisario and they scare the Makhzen.”
The funeral of the young man were held today in his native village. The young student was accompanied to his final resting place by hundreds of people waving Amazigh flags and banners including one where one could read “ULAC SmahULAC” (no forgiveness, no forgiveness); Lighthouse slogan of the Black Spring of Kabylia in 2001, when the Algerian police had murdered almost 150 young Kabyle with explosive bullets.
* Economic Power: zero
* Political Power: zero
* Military power: zero
* Strategic Power: zero
* Culture: zero
* Arts: none
* Exports and foreign trade excluding hydrocarbons: none
* Science and Technology: zero
Citizens of neighboring countries (Morocco,Tunisia) do not rush to settle in Algeria, work and live there. They do not even rush to visit this unattractive country.
Algeria is not in a simple slump, but in deep shit since independence and for many centuries, if one believes that this country has existed before. Outside the Mediterranean, Algeria says nothing to anyone and very few people are able to locate it on the map. At first I thought that the people of these remote countries were stupid and uneducated because they did not know where Algeria was. I later discovered that I myself am unable to locate exactly where Botswana is on the map of my continent, Africa.
This is because Botswana is a small insignificant country that has no reason to catch my attention. It’s the same for the average North European who knows nothing about Algeria.
It is called an underdeveloped country. A country without human resources, without economic resources, without political resources and without cultural resources. People around the wold only talk about this country when there is a civil war or the massacres, an election tainted by fraud or a demonstration that results in deaths, not otherwise.
A country under oil infusion who expect that the serum bag hanging from the bed is empty to convulse and die on its deathbed after horrific civil wars (the 200,000 victims after FIS will only be trifles). Morocco and Tunisia have a much better chance to survive than Algeria.
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