The Legal Opinion recognising the Kabyle people and their right to self-determination

By Ferhat Mehenni

The history of peoples and nations, when it comes to defending their freedom, is often written in letters of blood and pain, in letters of courage and tears. If I could write alone, that of my people, the Kabyle people, I would have done so in letters of peace and reason.

The Mouvement pour l’Autodétermination de la Kabylie (MAK) and the Kabyle Government in Exile (Anavad), which I have the great honour and responsibility of leading, have so far written in such peaceful and intelligent language that the enemy is always taken aback. Algerian military strategists and their forces occupying Kabylia have used every provocation to lure us into barbaric territory, to no avail. It’s not because we’re cowards that we shrink from the enemy. The whole world knows the bravery and valour of Kabyle soldiers in battle. The Turks, the Nazis and the French all know something about it. We are not running away from combat. We do not give in to the ease of unconscious solutions. It is easier to fight with weapons in hand than to fight peacefully, as we are doing. What’s more, we refuse to let the choice of weapons be imposed on us by the enemy. This attitude shows our attachment to the sovereignty of the decision of the Kabyle people. We reject the option of violence as a civilisational choice.

We are a national liberation movement, but a new kind of national liberation movement. We are a peaceful movement. We are in the 21st Century and we don’t understand why we should still have to resort to the fury of bombs and the macabre mathematics of mass graves to make the enemy see reason, however mad he may be. There are surely a thousand other painless and less dramatic ways of resolving conflicts of interest between nations.

When Bouteflika supposedly resigned, I had to ask the man who had usurped power, the late General Ahmed Gaïd Salah, about the Kabyle question. I told him verbatim that the MAK’s right to self-determination did not fall within the military sphere. We have not gone underground. Kabylia is a political problem, not a military one. I reiterated this to his successor, General Chengriha, who also does not seem to have the gift of listening or the wisdom befitting his age. In his defence, let’s just say that the power at the top of dictatorships spreads more pride than benevolence.

In stating this obvious fact to the Algerian military, who have been squatting in power by force for 60 years, my poetic side deluded me somewhat about their heart, and their rare hint of humanity. It made me forget that they were all trained at KGB school, which taught them that violence is the best guarantee of power.

It was when I told them that I was a poet and a music lover, and that I refused to fall into the trap of violence, that they began to come up with plans, each one as ridiculous as the next, to demonise the MAK and make our angelic activists look like arms dealers and bloodthirsty people. They have dared to put the MAK’s pacifism at the top of the world terrorism list (sic). The FIS (Islamic Salvation Front), whose violence led to more than 200,000 deaths in Algeria in the early 90s, never had this ‘honour’.

More than 13,000 arrests followed by torture have been recorded within our ranks. On the basis of empty files and spurious accusations, thousands of convictions were handed down by judges who were hostage to their principals. Kabylia has been systematically burnt every summer for the past three years, using incendiary materials including phosphorus, dropped from drones, helicopters and reconnaissance aircraft. A hirakist and artist from Miliana was killed in front of the cameras by the Algerian services in order to accuse the MAK. Even in self-defence, we continued to hold back the Kabyle people, fed up with so much injustice and arbitrariness, inviting them to remain in the wake of the MAK’s pacifism. This is how we have prevented Kabylia from descending into general violence by preventing it from responding to the provocations of the Algerian regime.

I used to say, and I still say to the Algerian generals, that we are fighting you not by military means but by reason and the law. Democracy and transparency. The MAK is always open to credible proposals and serious, official negotiations, never clandestine ones. We are ready to study with them the best referendum procedures and deadlines for the Kabyle people’s right to self-determination.

Having not been heard for three years, we were led to proclaim the rebirth of the Kabyle state on 20 April 2024, at 6.57 pm, in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York. We did this despite the fact that we have no control over the local administration, because of our peaceful choice. While the colonial power spreads fear and terror in Kabylia with its brutality and crimes against the Kabyle people, the MAK inspires confidence and hope for freedom. If Algeria has the military control of Kabylia, the MAK has the heart and the respect of its people.

This is why, in keeping with our promise to fight our enemy through communication, the soundness of our demands and the legitimacy conferred on us by international law, nearly six months ago we approached firms of illustrious lawyers known the world over for the seriousness of their work, the soundness of their advice and their irreproachable morality, in order to issue a legal opinion on the demand for the right of the Kabyle people to self-determination.

Our choice fell on two major law firms: Brick Court Chambers(1) and Twenty Essex Chambers. Both have an impressive number of specialist lawyers whose expertise is unfailingly rigorous.

We met at least four of these experts:

1- Professor Robert McCorquodale. A renowned academic and jurist specialising in international law. He has appeared before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and is an expert member of United Nations Working Groups(2). He is ranked as an ‘eminent practitioner’ in the field of business and human rights by Chambers & Partners Global Ranking. He has appeared before the International Court of Justice to defend, among others, the State of Vanuatu(3).

2- Ali Al-Karim(4). Leading lawyer in international law. He has won several awards. He acts in public international law cases throughout the world, in particular before the ICJ, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). He also advises on issues relating to state immunity, diplomatic staff immunity, human rights and humanitarian law, etc.

3- Penelope Nevill(5). A specialist in international law, European Union law and the interaction between legal systems and regimes. She has appeared before the International Court of Justice and the Supreme Court of England and Wales. She started as a lawyer in New Zealand and advises governments and NGOs. She teaches at Cambridge, among other subjects, the law of armed conflict.

4- Andrew Brown. Former judicial assistant at the Court of Appeal of England and Wales and the Ministry of Justice.

A legal opinion is a clear-cut assessment of a given point of law. It is a doctrinal opinion which, in certain contentious cases, inspires the judge to base his decision or to enlighten the parties on a decisive question for the conclusion of an agreement in relation to a particular conflict.

The legal opinion issued on 04/09/2024 by the eminent specialists at Brick Court Chambers, after months of meticulous study and research into the history, society, culture and political organisation of Kabylia, is without appeal. I congratulate the Kabyle people, who now have a legal basis for legitimately, indeed legally, asserting their right to self-determination. The repression must stop and the occupying forces must leave the territory of Kabylia.

What does this legal opinion say, in a legally argued and documented manner, about all the areas affecting a people, its definition and its rights as recognised by international texts, in particular those ratified by all States, including Algeria? This historic document that we are publishing today and that we are going to send to all the international bodies and all the governments of the world says two essential things.

The first concerns the legal and irrefutable recognition of the Kabyles as a people. If there are still people who doubt this obvious fact, they have now been enlightened.

While post-French Algeria has subjected us to a scandalous and revolting denial of our existence since 1962, while Algeria oppresses us, assaults us, fights us, kills us, burns us alive, tortures us, terrorises us, bans our language and puts us in prison as soon as we claim to be Kabyle, legal opinion, as the voice of absolute law, has re-established the truth and recognised that the Kabyles are a people. Yes, we are a people, a true people, real and flamboyant, proud and haughty, united and supportive. I have been proclaiming this loud and clear all over the world since 2001. All the supporters of Algerian colonialism in Kabylia need to put their clothes back on. They can no longer afford to make fun of the expression ‘Kabyle people’ by putting the word ‘people’ in inverted commas.

Today, doubt has been removed once and for all.

The second statement in this legal opinion follows on from the first point. Since the Kabyles are a people, as such they have the right to self-determination. What Kabylia is claiming through the MAK and Anavad is entirely natural and legitimate. We are not outlaws, we are not madmen, we are not adventurers, we are simply the voice of a people who aspire to live free and independent, in the peace and dignity that colonialism has deprived us of since 1857.

Algeria, which enshrined the duty to support the right of peoples to self-determination in its latest constitution (Article 30), should start applying it to the Kabyle people today, especially as they refuse to accept violence as a solution.

We solemnly appeal to reason and a sense of responsibility on the part of Algeria’s ‘decision-makers’. All Kabyle political prisoners must be released, Article 87 of the Penal Code must be repealed and official negotiations must begin with the legitimate representative of the Kabyle people, in this case the MAK, on the modalities and deadlines for a referendum on self-determination for Kabylia.

We are determined to continue on our peaceful path to freedom.

The document in our hands is the basis for registering Kabylia with the UN Fourth Committee, which is responsible for decolonisation, as a non-autonomous territory to be decolonised.

This document opens our eyes to our status as a Kabyle nation entitled to proclaim its independence next year, preferably through negotiation, if not unilaterally.

We dedicate this victory to all those who have sacrificed their lives for Kabylia, to those who have been murdered for their pro-Kabylian ideas, to those who have been or are still imprisoned for their fight for the freedom of the Kabyle people.

Long live free and independent Kabylia.
Ulac lvut ulac !!!
Long live free and independent Kabylia.

Exile, 05/09/2024

Ferhat At Sɛid (MEHENNI)
President of the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK)
President of the Kabyle Government in Exile (Anavad)
Click on the link below to download this historic document, the legislative opinion recognising the existence of the Kabyle people and confirming their right to self-determination under international law.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/siwel.docutheque/permalink/1958465414580220/

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