Boualem Sansal: the unjustifiable silence of Algiers

Dfor a week, his relatives have had no news of the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, 75, arrested on November 16 upon his arrival in Algiers after a short stay in France. This silence questions and worries. A free spirit who entered simultaneously into literature and into dissidence against an Algerian regime accused of all turpitude and against religious obscurantism, Boualem Sansal has been carrying the pen in the wound for a quarter of a century. He already paid the price when he was dismissed from his responsibilities as a senior civil servant at the Ministry of Industry, more than twenty years ago.

Until further information, his arrest may be linked to recent controversial statements made to the French far-right media Borders. He took up the Moroccan version of a kingdom amputated by the colonial France of the 19th century.^e century of part of its territories for the benefit of what was to become Algeria many decades later, at the end of a terrible war of independence.

This provocation in line with what has become a line of conduct for the writer coincided with the confirmation of the dubbing by France, on the occasion of a reconciliation visit by Emmanuel Macron to Rabat, at the end of October, of the thesis of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. It is virulently contested by Algiers, which has cut diplomatic ties with its neighbor since 2021.

That the French president said to himself “concerned”on November 21, the absence of news concerning the man of letters who lives in Boumerdès, about fifty kilometers from Algiers, should not serve as a diversion for the Algerian regime. Boualem Sansal does not have to become a pawn in the difficult relationship which opposes rather than brings together France and Algeria. The disputes which persist are the responsibility of the States, their interests, and them alone. No individual can become its hostage.

Confusing

That the hatred of this little-known writer in his country, where his books are not published, earn him the support of French personalities who thus settle by proxy old quarrels as well as more recent ones with Algeria or Islam, and that these personalities find themselves more and more often on the right of the right, is not the subject either.

The arrest of Boualem Sansal is all the more confusing as it comes after the excellent news that was the 1^is November the release of journalist Ihsane El Kadi, imprisoned since the end of 2022. Director of one of the last private press groups in Algeria, then prosecuted for “foreign financing of one’s business” with the aim of “engage in activities likely to undermine state security”the latter benefited from a pardon granted by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune following his re-election in September, under the conditions which prevail in Algeria in terms of presidential elections.

This release, followed by that of around ten known activists from the Hirak protest movement born in 2019, which precipitated the resignation of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, gave hope that a relative climate of appeasement would establish itself. Any form of relentlessness against Boualem Sansal would dissipate him, without being able to discern the slightest benefit for Algerian society.