LONDON, PARIS, and NEW YORK, March 1, 2006-A presidential decree in Algeria will consecrate impunity for crimes under international law and other human rights abuses, and even muzzle open debate by criminalizing public discussion about the nation's decade-long conflict, four human rights groups cautioned today.
The organizations are Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Center for Transitional Justice, and the International Federation for Human Rights.
On 27 February, Algeria's full cabinet, with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika presiding, approved the "Decree Implementing the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation," bypassing a debate in parliament, which is not in session. The full text of the law was not disclosed before its adoption.
The organizations called the law's impunity measures a major setback for human rights in Algeria. The measures include a blanket amnesty to be extended to the security forces and seemingly also to state-armed militias, while widening previous partial amnesties for members of armed groups, all of whom have committed crimes under international law and other grave human rights abuses that so far have not been investigated. The government presented the law as "implementing" President Bouteflika's "Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation," which Algerian voters approved in a referendum on 29 September 2005. However, that charter did not expressly mention any amnesty for security force members.
Confirming fears expressed by the signatory organizations in a joint statement of 14 April 2005, the proposed new measures amount to a denial of truth and justice to the victims of the abuses and their families. They will bar victims and their relatives from seeking justice in Algeria and prevent the truth about these abuses from emerging through Algerian courts. These measures, which extend to crimes against humanity and other grave abuses, contravene Algeria's obligations under international law to investigate such abuses, hold their perpetrators accountable, and provide victims judicial remedies.
Algeria is emerging from a decade of internal conflict in which up to 200,000 people were killed and several thousand more "disappeared." To date, Algerian authorities have largely failed to investigate the human rights abuses committed both by armed groups and state security forces since the conflict began in 1992.
Rather than moving to prevent future abuses by ending this de facto impunity, Algerian authorities have now decreed a broad amnesty for past abuses. In the chapter entitled "Measures in Recognition of the Artisans of Safeguarding the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria," the law states, according to the version of the text published in Algerian newspapers:
Article 44: Citizens who, through their involvement or their determination, contributed to saving Algeria and protecting the nation's institutions, performed acts of patriotism.
Article 45: No legal proceedings may be initiated against an individual or a collective entity, belonging to any component whatsoever of the defense and security forces of the Republic, for actions conducted for the purpose of protecting persons and property, safeguarding the nation or preserving the institutions of the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria. The competent judicial authorities are to summarily dismiss all accusations or complaints.
The text does not explicitly mention members of civilian militias armed by the state, the so-called "Legitimate Self-Defense Groups." However, the phrases "artisans of safeguarding the.Republic" and "belonging to any component whatsoever of the defense and security forces" suggest that the amnesty in fact covers abuses committed by members of these groups.
The decree also provides an amnesty to members of armed groups who surrender or are in prison, as long as they did not "commit, or were accomplices in, or instigators of, acts of collective massacres, rape, or the use of explosives in public places." However, these exceptions, no matter how appropriate, do not extend to other grave crimes, suggesting that armed group members who murdered one or more persons will go free as long as the killings were not collective in nature. The amnesty would also cover other grave crimes committed by armed groups, including torture and the abduction of persons whose fate remains unknown.
Moreover, no details have been provided concerning the mechanism or process for determining whether armed-group members applying for amnesty are ineligible due to their implication in "collective massacres, rapes, or the use of explosives in public places." Given the virtual lack of investigations into these crimes when they were committed, a thorough vetting process today to exclude their perpetrators from the amnesty would require much political will and resources from the state. The Civil Harmony Law of 1999 created a screening mechanism that operated arbitrarily and with a lack of transparency, resulting in de facto wide-ranging impunity for abuses committed by armed groups.
The law further proposes to compensate families of "disappeared" persons, many of whom suffer economic hardship. There is no guarantee that such compensation will be proportional to the gravity of the violation and the harm suffered, in keeping with international standards. CCCompensation payments are conditional on families obtaining death certificates for their "disappeared" relatives, a measure that many of them oppose as long as the state does not provide them with the truth about the fate of their loved ones. The summary does not even mention the right of these families to this information. After years of broken promises by state officials to investigate and provide the truth, this new measure aims to erect a permanent barrier to that truth, all the more so because the impunity provisions cited above preclude relatives from seeking information and justice in domestic courts, either through civil or criminal complaints.
Perhaps most ominously, the new legislation seeks to end not only prosecutions for crimes of the past, but even public debate about them. Article 46 states:
Anyone who, by speech, writing, or any other act, uses or exploits the wounds of the National Tragedy to harm the institutions of the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, to weaken the state, or to undermine the good reputation of its agents who honorably served it, or to tarnish the image of Algeria internationally, shall be punished by three to five years in prison and a fine of 250,000 to 500,000 dinars.
This provision threatens the right of victims and their families, human rights defenders, journalists, and any other Algerians to document, protest, or comment critically on the conduct of state security forces during the years of the internal conflict. It even threatens to penalize families of the "disappeared" who continue to campaign for disclosing the truth about the fate of their relatives. At a time when Algerian authorities have been aggressively prosecuting journalists working in privately-owned media for independent reporting and critical speech, and when state media allow virtually no dissenting views, laws based on this formulation would further narrow the space for free expression in Algeria, and for pursuit of truths about past events.
Article 47 of the decree empowers the president, "by virtue of the mandate given to him by the 29 September 2005 referendum," to, "at any time, take all other measures necessary for putting into effect the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation." This sweeping presidential power undermines the rule of law in Algeria and opens the way for further measures that grant impunity to perpetrators or that curb free speech. A similar provision of the 1999 partial amnesty act, known as the "Civil Harmony Law," led to President Bouteflika granting a blanket amnesty in January 2000 to all members of two armed groups that agreed to lay down their arms, regardless of their possible implication in grave human rights abuses.
The signatory organizations recognize that the legacy of Algeria's past should be dealt with in ways determined by Algerians themselves. However, a national referendum, such as the one held on 29 September 2005, cannot be the means by which a government evades its international obligations by adopting national legislation that runs contrary to them. Respect for and protection of fundamental human rights, as well as the right to know the truth and obtain justice, cannot be subject to a majority vote.
Amnesties, pardons and similar national measures that lead to impunity for crimes against humanity and other serious human rights abuses, such as torture, extrajudicial executions and "disappearances," contravene fundamental principles of international law. Authorities such as the UN Secretary-General, authoritative UN and regional bodies, and international tribunals have stated that there should be no amnesties or similar measures that afford impunity for crimes under international law and other serious human rights abuses.
The Algerian government has failed to issue invitations to UN experts who have long-standing requests to visit the country to conduct investigations, such as the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. The signatory organizations call on the government to issue invitations to these experts without further delay. The government should also facilitate the visits of the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, both of which it has agreed to in principle but not yet scheduled.
The signatory organizations reiterate their call on the Algerian government to uphold the right of all victims of serious human rights abuses to truth, justice, and full reparation. The organizations believe that such guarantees are essential to any process of reconciliation. Regrettably, in most respects, the proposed law takes Algeria in the opposite direction by granting widespread impunity and shutting down efforts to investigate and even debate momentous events of the country's recent past.
Organised intergenerational transmission of trauma in Algeria:
The vote of Charter of Reconciliation
September 29, 2005
Tomorrow, September 29, 2005, Algeria is bound to seal its fate for decades and veil its hidden trauma. President Bouteflika is seeking his third mandate by promoting what he calls the Charter of Reconciliation, a Charter that will put a final end to the pursuit of truth and legal redress for all the crimes committed by islamist armed groups for the past two decades.
This is supposed to put an end to years of what we, the democratic opposition in Algeria, call a 'war against civilians', rather than a civil war. For in a civil war, civilians are fighting with one another, while in this war against civilians, the population has been taken hostage by terrorist islamists and sandwiched between an undemocratic and corrupt government on the one hand and a fascist taliban-like threat on the other hand.
Unlike what international press usually publish on Algeria, islamist violence stared shortly after independence (1962). In the late sixties the first armed groups sabotaged electrical installations, attacked military cantonments to rob armaments and attacked quarries to rob explosives. Throughout the seventies, they trained their future troops, continued with sporadic attacks and started individual murder of symbolic figures. The first individual murder was committed against a very famous gay poet.
In the eighties, attacks intensified against representatives of the State, police officers, young men drafted in the army, and civil servants. It culminated in the late eighties with a youth uprising that was promptly taken over by the Islamic Salvation Front, our first Islamic party, legalized in 89 together with other parties; this put an end to the one party system that governed Algeria for nearly 30 years.
And of course, violence exploded against the civilian population after the cancellation of the elections in 1991 that would have seen FIS in power: Islamic armed groups announced in advance which sector of the population they will target, and they proceeded: intellectuals, artists, journalists, women and foreigners successively fell under their knives and bullets. Women were slaughtered for no other reason than being women, they were mutilated, their heads paraded on swords, their pregnant bellies slit open to extract their fetus, etc... No horror was spared to the population which nevertheless resisted and opposed the armed groups, after having briefly listened to their promises and lies during the 91 elections. And for taking that political distance from fundamentalists, the population was branded "kofr" and condemned to death by fundamentalists.
This is the part of our history that has made the headlines in the international press, but indeed we started facing fundamentalist violence decades earlier.
So much violence , for so long , has left open wounds and scars of all sorts. These bleeding wounds and scars need to be talked about; families need to know the truth in order to grief and mourn. We cannot skip this stage without dramatic consequences in future.
Instead of putting an end to violence, this proposed Charter is likely to put a veil over history, with all the consequences that one can foresee, having learnt from the example of other countries which have undergone similar traumatic violence.
This Charter is in keeping with previous attempts by successive Algerian governments to pacify Islamic armed groups by giving them a blanket amnesty for all the crimes they committed against the civilian population. Already under President Zeroual in 1999, a law on Rahma (pardon) was passed, which, "in the name of peace" granted pardon to all those "who had no blood on their hands". Officially labelled "repentants", unrepentant soldiers from AIS ("Islamic Salvation Army" the official armed branch of FIS, the "Islamic Salvation Front"), the first religious party in Algeria, GIA (Islamic Armed Group), FIDA (which specialized in urban guerilla and slaughtered intellectuals in Algiers) were supposed to give back their arms to government forces, confess and be pardoned. It was assumed that, unarmed, Islamists will become peaceful.
Interestingly enough, only 5000 guns were given back, usually old hunting guns, while the modern armament remains in the possession of islamic armed groups. For future use.
The Commissions that were instituted in order to listen to their confessions actually witnessed triumphant Islamists publicly praising their" military" actions.
They gained total impunity and their victims had no more right to seek the truth from tribunals. No complain can be accepted.
Meanwhile we had numerous cases of Islamic " repentants" parading, and sometimes even parading in arms, the streets of their village and terrorizing the survivor families of their previous victims, threatening them to be the next victims. They started again to terrorize shop keepers who played music in their shops, etc…
It was later followed by the law on National Civic Concordia, passed by the next President ,Abdelaziz Bouteflika, which extended pardon to those who had blood on their hands.
And it culminates with this proposed Charter which extends impunity to all criminals except those that committed mass crimes, massacres and rapes. All individual crimes are now "forgotten", without any investigation of the truth. No facts, no figures, no Commission or Jury any more, no responsibility being established, and no pardon, since the perpetrators are not even asked to repent anymore, even if fictively.
One can expect that even mass crimes, massacres and rapes will not be investigated, families of victims will have no information on what exactly happened to their kin and no redress.
Meanwhile, former terrorists are granted financial help for reinsertion, either a lump sum of money, a shop, a job, etc... Their orphans are taken care of by the state at par with the orphans of their victims.
Meanwhile army officers and soldiers who have been identified as having perpetrated extrajudicial killings against terrorists or supposed terrorists are judged by military tribunals, i.e. internally.
In a country that counted more than 100 000 dead (estimations vary from 100 000 to 200 000) during the nineties only, and about 15 000 women raped by Islamic Armed Groups, victims and families of victims are appalled. Women's organizations massively protested but in vain. At the forefront of the protest were Rafd (Algerian Assembly of Women for Democracy) and Djazairouna (which gathers families of victims of terrorists).
The "campaign" for the vote of the Charter looks like a monologue of Bouteflika. No other political formation actually campaigns. Some have made their positions known through leaflets, but they now face harassment, they are arrested by night, intimidated, and face trial for "troubling public order".
In this political vacuum, the Charter is likely to pass and Bouteflika is likely to be reelected, after making the necessary changes in a Constitution that does not allow the President to seek a third mandate.
Uncured wounds will be buried again, a permanent source of future violence and revenge will lie in the secret of hearts of the Algerian society.
Marieme Hélie-Lucas
Algerian sociologist, psychotherapist, founder of the international solidarity network Women Living Under Muslim Laws
