Thank-you speech by Ferhat Mehenni, first recipient of the independentium prize.
The creation of the “INDEPENANTIUM” prize is in itself an immense step towards a world of peace and solidarity. May it make humanity sufficiently aware of the injustices done to minority and oppressed peoples, to dominated and colonized peoples. By awarding the prize to women and men who fight peacefully for the freedom of their people, we become a warning to international opinion of the risks of tragedy, genocide and regional destabilization, often with incalculable consequences. This initiative is not only to be applauded, it should also be sponsored by international bodies, making it as exemplary an institution as the Nobel Peace Prize.
History will remember that its idea and initiative come from a great American people, the people of Quebec, who aspire to the peaceful exercise of their right to self-determination. The fact that Quebec, despite the political status it enjoys in Canada – far more enviable than that of many oppressed peoples around the world, such as the Kabyle people in Algeria – proves that solutions granted and not negotiated with those concerned, whether federal or autonomous, are nothing but muzzles on peoples. The only true happiness of nations lies in their independence and freedom.
I am grateful to you for making me the first recipient of this symbolic award. However, whatever my talents and sacrifices you have decided to reward, it is in truth the merits of my people and my land, the Kabyle, that you are honoring. I am but a speck of dust in this collective being, a speck of dust on which history has cast its lot, entrusting it with the weighty responsibility of leading its people, like Moses, towards the light of freedom. Like Atlas, I carry this burden on my shoulders.
On this day of Grace, 02/07/2023, this award goes to all Kabyles imprisoned for their commitment to a free and respected Kabylia; to all those who were killed to assassinate Kabylia and its values.
Dear friends, honored guests,
If the fight for a people’s independence is more than a right, it’s a duty, and it’s even more noble when it’s peaceful. However, I am far from delegitimizing those who fight with arms in their hands for their nation’s freedom, especially when they come to this extreme only after having exhausted all the avenues that reason and wisdom advise. Non-violence must always be the rule; its opposite the exception. Recourse to extreme means should be a last resort.
Despite my age, and perhaps because of my modest psychological culture, I still don’t understand the sadistic pleasure that some power brokers take in wanting to govern peoples to whom they are strangers, to degrade them to the rank of sub-peoples, to deny them even the right to exist. And yet, there’s no need to crush or humiliate one’s opposite number to show one’s strength and superiority in a given field. These colonizers probably also fail to grasp the natural propensity of every people to want to live upright, free and independent. They don’t realize that if a people undertakes the work of political emancipation, it is also to tell those who dominate them that they are their equals.
Humanity, which has enshrined the equality of men in law, should also proclaim the principle of the equality of peoples within the UN or a global governance system. And the sooner the better. It’s an aberration to want to protect individuals from slavery, while allowing their peoples and nations to be enslaved.
It is in this sense that we appeal to Man. We appeal to his conscience. The world is too unjust for us to leave it to the dangerous current that is sweeping it away. The denial of the right to exist to hundreds of peoples around the world is a crime against humanity. The UN, the common house where all accomplished peoples should come together, is squatted by unauthorized occupants who are turning our nations away.
Human beings have always behaved in this selfish and contradictory way, trying to freeze time at the moment of their only achievements, so that no one questions them, but at the same time wishing to open it up to fructify them. For example, no matter how hard we try to ensure eternity for our land borders around the world, they never stop moving. So it’s Donquichottesque vanity to want to stop humanity in motion, on the march towards freedom, justice, prosperity and progress.
To freeze time is to stop growing, learning and evolving. It means condemning ourselves to boredom and laziness, and ultimately to decay and the loss of what we want to preserve. I would therefore like to denounce at least two international decisions that are detrimental to the advent of a world of peace and fraternity:
1) The unjust closure, since December 1961, of the list of territories to be decolonized by UN bodies. This closed the door on so many nations, including the Kabyle nation, which have the right to live independently.
2) The OAU’s consecration of the principle of the intangibility of borders inherited from colonization. By virtue of this very principle, this continental institution is perpetuating the very colonialism it is supposed to be putting an end to. Worse still! It has condemned African peoples to underdevelopment and misery, dictatorship and instability for the past sixty years. Tomorrow, it will condemn them to wars of independence, some of which have already begun!
For, as I wrote 13 years ago, “The decolonization of fifty years ago was that of false nations. The decolonization of real peoples is about to begin. (Le Siècle identitaire ou la fin des Etats postcoloniaux. Michalon 2010). Indeed, unless the right of peoples to self-determination is restored on a global scale, it’s a safe bet that all these nations, deprived of recognition and a seat on international bodies, will end up resorting to violence to ensure their survival and emancipation, and to break the yoke that keeps them enslaved and under foreign domination.
For the good of humanity, it’s worth remembering that when reason fails to open the doors of life to a people, violence, however reprehensible, becomes the only passkey.
A great step has just been taken through this ceremony, which I would have liked to share with my Catalan friend, President Puigdemont, who, to my great regret, was prevented from doing so, despite all his good will.
To ensure that this luminous and life-saving idea does not die, it is up to its initiators to institutionalize it, define its statutes, criteria and periodicity, and make it an instrument at the service of freedom, the well-being of nations and the whole world.
Montreal 02/07/2023.
Ferhat MEHENNI
President of the Provisional Kabyle Government in Exile (Anavad) and of the Movement for Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK)
INDEPENDENTIUM PRIZE: PACIFISM AND VIOLENCE
