Kabyle party asks for the holding of a referendum on self-determination · Up till now, party advocated an agreement on autonomy
The National Council of the Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylia (MAK) has passed a declaration in which the party calls for the Kabyle people’s right of self-determination and sets an own state for Kabylia as a political goal. The establishment of this state, the text says, should be achieved through a “popular veredict by means of the right to self-determination”.
This is the first time that MAK is that clear on the goal of establishing a Kabyle state. Up till now, the party had been declaring that its goal was to get self-government for Kabylia within Algeria, but it was not stated that the territory should have its own state.
According to the council by the National Council, Kabylia needs its own state to be protected from “mass inoculation of Arabo-Islamic ideology” and “yoke” that, in MAK’s view, the Algerian regime is implementint in the Kabyle lands since independence. The party says that Algiers economically and politically marginalises Kabylia. MAK blames the Algerian Government for artificially “increasing unemployment and exodus of Kabyles”, confiscating international aid, subsidizing Salafist associations, keeping a “military surveillance” in Kabylia, and supressing lay citizens who refuse to “bow to Islamist diktat”.
MAK document also makes reference to the current political situation in Algeria, having as a background President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s bad health condition. Having been hospitalized in Paris, Bouteflika has recovered in a way he is now able to attend cabinet meetings in Alger. But little is known about his health condition in the long term, a situation that could lead to an undergrown battle for power in Algiers.
The party says that the Kabyles are “not concerned at all” by the “clan flight” that could emerge if Bouteflika steps down. The Kabyle people, MAK argues, “has never recognized Algiers’ racist regim”. “Indiference” to Bouteflika’s health condition “proves that the divorce between Kabylia and the Algerian state is irreversible”.
A decades-long fight
Kabylia is a mountainous area on the southern shore of the Mediterranean. It is mainly populated by the Kabyles, a people of Amazigh origin. Kabylia was integrated into Algeria during French colonization, and it has witnessed several episodes of political and cultural agitation during the last decades. In 1980, Kabyles demonstrated in favour of their language during the Amazigh Spring. In 2001, the death of a Kabyle student by the Algerian police triggered a massive wave of protests. Demonstrators called then for democratization and cultural and linguistic rights. The protests were suppressed by the Algerian forces, and more than 100 died. MAK was then established by singer Ferhat Mehenni.
