DIn the repressive jargon of Algerian power, it means that he was wrong to criticize a system that cultivates immobility while repressing free minds. But what does this story tell us, if not visceral fear that inspires a feather to an authoritarian regime which clings desperately to power and prosperous using industrial privileges?
In Brussels, the European Parliament was quick to react. “The arrest and detention of Boualem Sansal are condemned. We demand its immediate and unconditional release, ”we read in the resolution adopted by an overwhelming majority of 533 votes for and 24 against, Thursday, January 23.
This text, which underlines the sordid conditions of the arrest of Sansal, also denounces systematic attacks on fundamental rights in Algeria. We could almost hear the annoyed sighs of Algerian dignitaries, unaccustomed to what we highlight their methods worthy of a banana republic.
Institutionalized paranoia
For several years, Algeria has tapped in the rankings of press freedom, reaching 139th place in 2024. According to figures relayed by human rights organizations, at least 215 prisoners of opinion populate the Algerian jails. Censorship extends to everything that could look like a dissident voice. Whether journalists like Abdelwakil Blamm or writers such as Mohamed Tadjadit, the process remains the same: grotesque accusations of national security, expeditious trials and a inhuman prison network.
As the European resolution underlines, “Mr. Sansal was questioned in the absence of his lawyer, which constitutes a violation of his right to a fair trial ”. Even more tragic, the writer has been hospitalized several times, a sign that his conditions of detention seriously compromise his health.
The Sansal case illustrates this climate of institutionalized paranoia
-Thus, faced with the arbitrariness, the MEPs, who recall that between 2021 and 2024 the European Union paid 213 million euros to Algeria as part of the multi -year indicative program, suggest that “future funding payments of the Union should take into account the progress made ”. A diplomatic way of saying that in the absence of evolving on the issue of human rights, Algeria may well be cut off.
In any case, this file has added oil to the fire of an already chaotic Franco-Algerian relationship. Especially since President Emmanuel Macron went up to the niche, describing the imprisonment of Sansal as “totally arbitrary”. An intervention that Algerian power, in an excess of well -established susceptibility, called “unacceptable interference”.
This tense exchange reflects the deep degradation of bilateral relations, which accelerated last summer when Paris sparked a diplomatic storm by openly supporting the autonomy plan for the Moroccan Sahara, a red line for Algiers.
Moreover, for several observers, the incarceration of Boualem Sansal is linked to his remarks on the territorial integrity of Morocco, he who had publicly praised Moroccan pragmatism in this file. Indeed, according to Le Monde, the Algerian regime particularly criticizes Sansal, in its interview with the French Border site, of having notably adopted the Moroccan position affirming that the territory of the kingdom would have been amputated for the benefit of Algeria during French colonization.
In this, what irritates Algiers precisely, is the diplomatic successes garnered by Rabat in the management of the question of the Moroccan Sahara, and which result in the membership of the national cause more and more countries. Success that haunts the Algerian regime and seems to have plunged it into a frenzy of diplomatic absurdities, to the point of discrediting itself on the international scene. Successes that multiply, legitimized by a historical truth: the Moroccanity of the Sahara.
F. Ouriaghli
