Algeria: No to the lynching of women; No to the 'National Amnesty'!

We are outraged by the murderous rage of the fundamentalist islamists which once again was displayed in the « El Haicha » area in Hassi-Messaoud, an oil-producing city in south Algeria. We have not forgotten the tragic night of July 13 2001 when almost fifty women suffered an agony in the same area. Indeed, that night, several hundreds of individuals made wild by the preaching of an imam, armed with clubs, knifes and swords, charged women workers and their children. The European Feminist Initiative IFE-EFI stands by the side of Algerian feminists to call all democratic forces to demonstrate their solidarity with the women of Hassi-Messaoud.

How far will this wildness go? Almost ten years after the 2001 punitive raid, the horror scenario is happening again! Again the sword, the knife, the axe and the stick against defenceless women. They are attacked, tortured, raped and murdered. For many weeks, terrorism is raging again and women, ever again women, are the scapegoats of attackers who try to impose their order to society.

In spite of the charges registered at the police station, the police remains completely passive. The complaints are closed with not sequence. No measure has been taken to put an end to this climate of violence. In this highly protected zone, does that mean that for the algerian authorities, the oil field security is more precious than human lives?
 
Obviously, this dramatic situation goes with all the drifts shockingly named «rahma», «civil union», «national reconciliation» but which actually in the name of a «national amnesty»  make crime, rape, kidnapping seem ordinary or even make them legal, and threaten the future of Algeria compromising with political Islam.
 
Those systems have never ensured the protection of victims against Islamist terror.

They never did justice to the families of victims nor to the victims themselves, and particularly the survivors of the HASSI MESSAOUD slaughters. On the contrary the victims must hide, hush, resign to flee, to keep silence, even to go into exile.
 
These tragic events, bring forth once more, the necessity to abrogate the family code bringing women to a status of sub-citizens and fostering in the minds a remote obscurantism.

The Algerian State failed its first mission which is to ensure the security of its citizens of both genders
 
The European Feminist Initiative IFE-EFI calls for:

• The end of  terror against women in Hassi-Messaoud and all the abuses,
• The setting of an exceptional and immediate protection  to guarantee the  security, the physical integrity of these women and their right to work,
• The public acknowledgement of local and territory authorities, of the terrorist acts they are victims of,
• The setting of  legal actions against all those who were recognised responsible of crimes against them,
• The implementation of a judicial procedure to stop the impunity of barbarian and terrorist acts.

La Coordination Européenne de l’IFE-EFI
15 April 2010