Belkacem Houam, of the Arabic-language daily “Echorouk”, was detained following an article on date exports.
Can we still do journalism in Algeria? Sector professionals are asking the question after the surprise incarceration, Thursday, September 8, of Belkacem Houam, of the Arabic-language daily Echorouk, following an article on the return of “deglet nour” dates ( particularly in France ) because of the presence of a pesticide banned in the European Union.
The article, published on Wednesday, reported criticism from unnamed exporters about the authorities’ management of pesticide use. It also indicated that an “immediate” decision to stop date exports had been taken by the Ministry of Commerce. He reacted the same day, denouncing an article “based on unjustified information, devoid of any foundation and detrimental to the national economy and the wealth that the country conceals”. He announced in the process that he was going to take “all necessary measures against the author of the article and the newspaper concerned, including legal proceedings before the competent courts”.
The newspaper “Echorouk” was refused printing at the state printing office
The clarifications from the Ministry of Commerce and, later, the Ministry of Agriculture seemed sufficient to close the subject, but things will unexpectedly get carried away. While the newspaper Echorouk was refused printing at the state printing office on Thursday, Belkacem Houam, summoned by the courts, was placed in preventive detention in the prison of El Harrach, in Algiers.
From three to thirty years in prison
The news caused general amazement. “Never should a journalist go to prison for this”, indignantly told the Twala news site, while Khaled Drareni, representative of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in North Africa, called for the journalist’s release, recalling that the Algerian Constitution provides that “the offense of the press cannot be punished by a custodial sentence”. “It is the physical integrity of the media professional which is now immediately at stake,” writes Ihsane El-Kadi, director of Radio M and Maghreb Emergent, sentenced in June to six months in prison for an article by on the place of the Islamo-conservative Rachad movement on the political spectrum.
Belkacem Houam is being prosecuted under a law “relating to the fight against illicit speculation”. Promulgated in December 2021, during the Covid-19 crisis, it criminalizes in particular “the dissemination of false or slanderous news or information knowingly disseminated to the public in order to cause market disruption and a sudden and unjustified increase in price”. He faces a sentence ranging from three to thirty years in prison. Stunned by the news, journalists called for a rally at the Abdelkader-Safir de Kouba press center in Algiers on Wednesday (September 14th).
Former communication minister Abdelaziz Rahabi said he was “shocked”, whereas the case should have been dealt with by a denial “in the forms in use in all the media of the modern world”. The detention of a journalist for information of a “pure commercial nature”, believes Mr. Rahabi reflects the “persistence of the political instrumentalization of justice and is a matter of practices from another age”. For the former minister, this is not an “isolated act”, but a policy that reduces the media field “to its simplest expression as a spokesperson for the official voice, with no real impact on an informed and more globalized public opinion than its leaders”.
