Algeria, where Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has just paid a visit, is preparing to vote on November 1 while the militants of Hirak (the popular protest movement) are prosecuted and often heavily condemned, sometimes on religious grounds.
Algerians are being called to the polls on November 1 to vote on the draft new constitution wanted by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune. A poll organized against the backdrop of political repression by militants of Hirak, the popular movement which put an end to the presence of Abdelaziz Bouteflika at the head of the country.
An opponent of the condemned regime
On October 8, one of the regime’s opponents, a secular activist, was sentenced to ten years in prison and a fine of 66,000 euros for “inciting atheism” and “insulting Islam”. This conviction on religious grounds is the heaviest handed down so far against a Hirak activist. This man in his fifties arrested on September 30 at his home appealed.
Algerian police reportedly found a Koran at his home that belonged to the militant’s grandfather. A book of which one of the pages was torn due to the age of the copy. But it is the “proof” which characterized “the offense or denigration of the dogma or the precepts of Islam” for the Algerian justice. And this is not the first time that sentences for religious reasons have been handed down in Algeria Last spring, for example, another political opponent was sentenced to one year in prison, notably for “insulting Islam” . She has since been provisionally released.
Many Muslim countries, such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or Iran for example, regularly judge and condemn their citizens or foreigners for reasons related to Islam. But in Algeria, even if Islam is the state religion, the country’s history has long been steeped in a form of secularism. It remains today only on the side of the opponents united within the Pact of the Democratic Alternative, and again, fractures have appeared within this movement, precisely on the issue of secularism.
Inaudible secular parties in the referendum campaign
In the debate, secular parties are audible, but not in the campaign since only parties that call for votes are allowed to campaign. The supporters of secularism have decided to boycott the referendum. The paradox is that the Islamists (close to the Muslim Brotherhood) who call on them to vote no on November 1 denounce a draft constitution that is too secular for their taste. They criticize, for example, an article according to which “the State protects women against all forms of violence in all places”.
Islamists see it as a risk of “threatening the private family sphere”. So far, the referendum of November 1 has above all aroused the indifference of the Algerian street.
