The Statements made by the President of the Algerian Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylie (MAK), Ferhat Mehenni to the Moroccan French speaking newspaper ‘L’Opinion’, drew mixed reactions among the street and the politicians in Algeria.
While some Berber citizens and human right activists voiced their support to the Algerian Kabyle leader, sources told Morocco Post that the mentioned statements were not received warmly by the Algerian authorities and army generals.
“The Moroccan proposal of regional autonomy for the Sahara is imbued with wisdom, unlike the rigid attitude of the Algerian government on the issue,” Mehenni told the Moroccan newspaper.
The Algerian leader hoped that the experience of regionalization spread in all North African countries , consistent with the cultural and ethnic diversity of all populations in the region “the general implementation of regional autonomy where this is necessary,” adding that the regional autonomy “has so far never dismembered a country.”.
It is worth mentioning that the Algerian leader condemned on his speech before the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the Algerian authorities repression of his people:
“At the moment and especially since the presidential elections of 2004, Bouteflika, the president whose election has always been questionable and unreliable, spread his net over the Kabyle territory to thwart an armed uprising which exists only in his head. In spite of this massive military presence in our territory, the Minister of the Interior has just announced that he will deploy reinforcements of gendarmes there to which he promised barracks in every municipality of Kabylia. Is there a genocidal intention against the Kabyle people at the top of the Algerian State? We are thus forced to believe that insecurity is carefully managed in this part of the country where Islamic terrorists who are foreigners have been walking-around during these last 15 years with complete impunity. The kidnappings of Kabyle businessmen have become a very lucrative industry, over twenty in three years. Terrorist false roadblocks, often set up within one hundred meters from the official checkpoints held by joint forces of the gendarmerie and the army, extort money from poor people in cars when they do not result in the killing of young draftees.” said Mehenni
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