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By HENRI ALLEG

Henri Alleg was one of the
leaders of the Algerian Commun-

ist Party during the seven-year

war for independence. In 1957 he
was arrested by the French colo-
nial authorities and savagely tor-
tured. He wrote about his experi-
ences in his bodk, “The Question.”

When Algiers was liberated, Al-
leg was again Editor of Alger Re-
publicain. The 1965 Boumedienne
coup forced him into exile again.

At the end of January this
year, a delegation of lawyers ar-
rived in Algeria to inquire into
what had happened to President
Ben Bella and many other pat-
riotic Algerians held in secret
for three years without having
been tried, or even accused.

Received by the Minister of
Justice of the Boumedienne Gov-
ernment, this delegation express-
ed the feelings generated by the
flagrant violations of human
rights in Algeria, rights guaran-
teed.on the one hand by.the UN
Charter (of which Algeria is one
of the signatories) and by the
Algerian Constitution itself.

The Minister, M. Bedjaoui, as-
sured his questioners—and his
statement received wide publi-
city—that the greater part of the
prisoners would be set free be-
fore too long a delay.

According to the Minister
there was no question of put-
ting on trial men whom he des-
cribed as “patriots” and who had
rendered eminent service to their
country in the past.

Months have passed and the
promise, unfortunately, has not
been kept. A number of the
prisoners are in a precarious
state of health — for example,
the former journalist of Alger
Republicain Bouzid Benallegue,
and the veteran Paul Caballero,
who was one of the secretaries
of the Algerian Communist
Party.

The prisoners are now in their
fourth year of detention without
counting those they passed in
colonialist jails. Cahallero, for
example, is passing his tenth
yearin jail. < .

But still more disturbing are
the reports coming through dur-
ing. the summer of an increase
in the repression striking the
broadest progressive circles. .

In July and August, many
thousands of arrests were. made
in various regions of the coun-

GERIA

six years of
independence

‘oe

Hand-gathering cereal crops in the south of Algeria.

try, including 2,000 in the city of
Algiers alone.

Arrested in the middle of the
night, frequently tortured by
methods used not so long ago
against Algerian fighters by
colonialist paratroopers, deprived
of food and sleep for days and
nights, isolated and blindfolded,
men and women “disappeared”
for several weeks and sometimes
months at a time, without being
able to give any sign of living to
their next of kin, let alone get
in touch With lawyers. —

e

The police who arrested them
tried desperately to get them to
admit to being members of the
Party of the Socialist Avant-
Garde of Algeria, which as is
known, today embraces Com-
munists and former militants of
the FLN who were drawn. to
Marxism-Leninism.

The police released them often,
only to arrest them again a few
days or weeks later, These man-
oeuvres, these attempts to inti-
midate them, evidently had the
air of accentuating still further
the- atmosphere of insecurity and
terror reigning in the country.

Certain Algerian leaders seem
to believe that such a climate
will help reinforce their autho-
rity — an authority which they
have not until now been able to
base on popular support.

It is paradoxical that a govern-
ment which reaffirms with a
great deal of insistence its “So-
cialist” position and in the field
of foreign policy effectively takes
up an anti-imperialist position,
should exercise such energy in
pursuing and persecuting its
citizens who are precisely those
most devoted partisans of Social-
ism and best - anti-imperialist
fighters.

What are the reasons for this
evident contradiction?

Algeria was shaken during last

July by a serious political crisis. .

Undoubtedly this was less spec-
tacular than that of December
1967 in which the tanks of Tahar
Zbiri, chief of staff of the army,

. faced an air force still loyal to

Col. Boumedienne.

The crisis was nonetheless
real, with a clash between, on
the one hand the most reaction-
ary elements in the regime—one
of whose heads is the Minister
of the Interior, Medeghri—and,
on the other, those who support-
ed certain progressive measures,

such as the application of agri-
cultural reform and the national-
ization of foreign companies. ~

It was, to be precise, follow-
ing the important nationalization
measures covering 18 big for-
eign companies, the majority
French, that the conflict took
shape. :

Medeghri, making himself the
spokesman of the neo-colonial-
ists and their allies inside the
country, had no hesitation in op-
posing nationalization and des-

‘cribing it as measures of “politi-

cal demagogy and improvisa-
tion.”
e

He offered his resignation from
the Government, with the idea
of obliging Boumedienne and the
supporters of nationalization to
retreat or at least to put on the
brakes,

The future will show how far
this manoeuvre was successful,
for the crisis has been provision-
ally overcome by a new compro-
mise which has kept Medeghri in
his post..

And it was in the wake of this
compromise that the wave of re-
pression mentioned above was
unleashed, as if the blow against
the progressives had constituted
one of the terms of the agree-
ment and “satisfaction” accord-
ed to the reactionaries.

But who would such repres-
sion benefit if ‘not in the first

place reaction based on the new -

bourgeoisie, greedy to secure its
privileges and power? It is this
element that was denounced by
Colonel Boumedienne in this
manner during a recent speech:

“We cannot tolerate, after hav-
ing driven out foreign colonial-
ists, the birth of a -category of
Algerians ownjng land and
money the better to secure their
own future.”

Unfortunately, this category
has not only been borne for some
time but has its representatives

highly placed in the State appa- _

ratus and the single party.
It is common talk that the
No. 1 of the FLN, Kaid Ahmed,

is himself a big landlord, own- .

ing nearly 3,000 hectares of land
(over 7,000 acres) in the Tiaret
region, where his family con-
stitutes a veritable feudal pow-
er. -

It is among the “Right Wing”
elements of the regime (who still
find it convenient to proclaim
themselves “Socialists” — albeit
in their own style) that one needs
to look for the: inspiration for
this new terror offensive and re-
pression unleashed in Algeria.

Their aims are manifold: first
of all to be sure, weaken and if
possible destroy the Party of the
Socialist Avant-Garde Algeria,
whose progress has disturbed
them, but also to compromise in
their anti-popular actions, the
progressives and anti-imperial-
ists who find themselves to-
gether with them in the seats of
power.

They work in this fashion to
isolate them from the masses
with the aim of preparing the
total handing over of power to
the Right. They have in view
also certain external objectives.

A third-world country which
persecutes “its”? Communists, or
those associated with them, gives
the impression that it is not en-
tirely “lost” to the imperialists,
despite the links which it has
developed with the Socialist
countries.

The Algerian leaders, in under-
taking to play this dangerous
game, have not been the first to
use anti-Communism as a means
of reassuring their powerful capi-
talist partners.

But it must be said that the
reactionary elements which,
since the coup d’etat of June 19,
1965, have worked patiently, ob-
stinately and with success to in-
crease their political and econo-
mic influence in independent Al-
geria, are not solely responsible
for the repression.

Among the real anti-imperial-
ists and progressives who have
official responsibilities, prejudi-
ces against -the Communists —
“exponents of foreign ideology”
— have not disappeared.

It appears necessary to them
to strike at their Left (and more
often than at their Right) to pre-
serve their freedom to choose an
illusory third way.

In fact, this permits the con-
solidation of bourgeois and reac-
tionary elements, and can only
lead, in the end, to their own
eviction, a process which has
many precedents in the recent
history of African and various
Arab countries,

Algerian revolutionaries, who
are conscious of the serious
danger of the “radicalization” to
the Right which hangs over the
regime, which has gone so far as
to call in question all the posi-
tive decisions taken since inde-
pendence, have a difficult and
complex task,

On the one hand they have to
denounce the anti-democratic
repression to which they are sub-
jected, and on the other hand
they have to guard against put-

‘ting “in the same bag” the dif-

ferent groups and personalities
in power.
Such an error would, in fact,

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—NOVEMBER 15, 1968—

Page 8

hinder any step forward toward
the broadest unity of all pro-
gressive Algerians (whether they
are to be found today in opposl-
tion or in the official apparatus
of the State ‘or the army).

The realization of this union
is the first objective of the Party
of the Socialist Avant-Garde of
Algeria (PAGS). There is no
other way of bringing Algeria
out of the grave political crisis
which has arisen from the coup
d’etat.

This is why, despite the per
secutions, of which it is victim,
and while appealing for a fight
against a repression which serves
only reaction and imperialism,
the PAGS defines its position
thus: :

“Despite new difficulties on
the way, lack of understanding
and manifestations of sectarian-
ism from other patriotic and pro-
gressive circles, the PAGS will
continue to work more than ever,
as in the past, for the union of
all progressives wherever they
may be found, with the aim of
forming a broad democratic and
popular front.

“This is the only way which.
conforms to the interests of the
country, to those of the working
masses and the Revolution: the
way toward the democratization

of the political life of the coun-

try, toward free and fruitful ex-
changes:on the questions of vital
interest, whatever may be the
other differences which separate
progressives on political and
ideological questions.”

Thus, in displaying their active
solidarity toward progréssive
Algerian victims of repression, 10
opposing the repeated violations
of elementary rights recognized
for all detained persons (notably
that of choosing a lawyer, see-
ing their family and defending
themselves before a court) the
progressives and democrats
throughout the entire world will
not merely be doing their human
duty, they will be giving prac-
tical aid to the Algeriah people
in their difficult fight for liberty,
democracy and progress.