Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-01-18-Speech-4-160"
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"en.20010118.8.4-160"2
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"Mr President, last Tuesday night, 11 people were murdered at a false roadblock in the Ain Defla province; on Saturday, 24 December, a young cabaret singer was murdered in a discotheque in the town of Annaba; a week before that, 16 high school students were savagely murdered inside their own boarding school. Algeria has just experienced its bloodiest Ramadan for two years. Over two hundred people – men, women, children, the elderly – have been murdered; girls have been abducted and raped. The horrendous, barbarous and inhuman violence perpetrated by the Islamist guerrilla groups appears to be on the increase, if indeed it ever actually ceased.
This information is obtained mainly from the newspapers. Indeed the relative official silence, except perhaps in the case of foreigners, can only be regretted. So I should like to pay tribute to the Algerian press, one of the most independent in the Arab world, which has paid such a high price at the hands of those who are implacably opposed to any form of freedom of expression and who dream of an uneducated people subject to their diktats. Yet, in the last year, and more, thousands of terrorists are supposed to have surrendered their weapons in return for a total amnesty.
The election of President Bouteflika had given the people hope, but we are forced to acknowledge that the path taken by the ‘civil concord law’ is a very long way from leading to peace. Even though the Algerian people displayed remarkable resistance in order to reject fundamentalism, the amnesty for such murders – described by some as crimes against humanity – and the lack of punishment enforced upon the perpetrators of these crimes appear to have exonerated them to the point that they are continuing their murderous work.
Surely attention should be paid instead to the opinions of the associations of the families of the victims of terrorism, which are outraged that they have received no form of compensation while ‘penitent’ Islamist rebels are given financial support in order to be reintegrated into society?
Surely the doubly courageous fight of Algerian women should be recognised, since they are the main victims of terrorism yet, at the same time, still subjected to a family code which flouts their most basic rights?
Finally, the economic and social situation is also perilous, when it already proved a propitious breeding ground for the rise of Islamism in the 1980s. Subject to intense external pressures – I am thinking of debt – Algeria finds itself in a crisis which has already led to an unprecedented rise in unemployment. More than ever, solidarity with the democrats and with an Algeria which is fighting against terrorism and death and for a free future is urgently needed."@en1
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