When Amira Bouraoui, a French-Algerian democracy activist, boarded a plane to France from Tunisia last month, she thought her ordeal was finally over.
She twice failed to flee Algeria, where her activism placed her in the government’s sights. Her third attempt, by illegally entering neighboring Tunisia, got her arrested and threatened with deportation. Only a last-minute offer of consular protection from France saved her.
“I am ready to do anything to get out of Algeria,” Ms Bouraoui, 47, said in a recent interview on the outskirts of Paris, where she now lives in exile, asking not to disclose her location. exact point. “Not being able to freely express myself is like a slow death to me.”
What she did not expect, however, was retaliation by the Algerian government. A dozen days after Ms. Bouraoui’s escape, prosecutors charged her 71-year-old mother, her cousin, an acquaintance of the journalist, a taxi driver and a customs official with “intimidation” criminal conspiracy” in helping her escape.
“They’re saying to me, ‘We helped you through your mother,'” Ms Bouraoui said.
Her case is part of what academics and human rights groups have described as an increasingly powerful crackdown on civil society by an Algerian government slipping into authoritarianism. In recent years, hundreds of activists have been jailed, dozens more have fled abroad and the last remnants of an independent media outlet have been strangled.
Four years after one popular uprising, known as Hirakoverthrow the 20-year autocratic president of Algeria, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, and seemingly heralding a new dawn for the country, hopes of a true democracy were dashed. In a grim twist of fate, some of Hirak’s supporters now even feel nostalgic for Bouteflika’s time in power.
“We were more liberal,” Ms. Bouraoui said. “I feel sad saying that.”
Ms Bouraoui, a gynecologist, rose to fame in the 2010s for speaking out against Mr Bouteflika’s decision long and undemocratic rule.
When the Hirak uprising broke out in 2019, she quickly became the face of the movement. Every week, the flow of protesters from all walks of life take to the streets peacefully to demand an overhaul of Algeria’s corrupt, military-backed government.
Shaken by rare protestscountry establishment Mr. Bouteflika’s resignation and endorsed a new president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who was elected with the promise of heeding the protesters’ demands. He started with a few gestures of goodwill, releasing the detained protesters.
Ms Bouraoui said: “One of Tebboune’s first statements was, ‘I salute Hirak with open arms. “I trusted him.”
However, she added, “it was only extended to beat us.”
After the coronavirus pandemic brought protests to a halt, Algeria’s security services returned, arresting dozens of activists in a cat-and-mouse game. As of October, about 250 people “are in detention for participating in peaceful protests, activities or expression,” according to one report. Human Rights Watch report.
Ms Bouraoui, who has faced multiple arrests and been detained for days, was sentenced to two years in prison in 2021 for “insulting Islam” and insulting the president. She has yet to be jailed on her escape pending an appeal.
Fearing new protests, Algerian authorities have specifically targeted individuals and groups with ties to the Hirak uprising to ensure that the movement is “strangled once and for all.” Dalia Ghanem, an Algerian expert at the European Union Institute for Security Studies. .
Two weeks ago, Rassemblement Actions Jeunesse, a leading youth-oriented human rights organization, and Mouvement Démocratique et Social, a left-wing party founded 60 years ago, were banned by Algeria’s highest administrative court. motion. journalist and media organizations that covered the uprising extensively were jailed and shut down.
“They are blocking any possibility of establishing civil society, any hope of Hirak’s return,” said Saïd Salhi, vice president of the Algerian Federation for the Defense of Human Rights.
The group was disbanded in June following a complaint from the Interior Ministry. But Mr. Salhi, now living in exile in Belgium, said the group only learned about the judicial process in January, when relevant court documents started spreading on the internet.
Mary Lawlor, United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, recently denounce these bans are “acts of intimidation, silence, and repression.”
The Algerian Ministry of Justice did not respond to several requests for comment. Last fall, Abderrachid Tabbi, the country’s justice minister, speak United Nations that the recent prosecutions “have nothing to do with freedom of expression.”
Born after a bloody war of independence from France six decades ago, Algeria has long been ruled by a one-party system. Since the late 1980s, power has remained in the hands of a close group of political and military leaders, a system that Ms.competitive authoritarianism,” incorporates iconic elements of democracy, such as multi-party elections.
In 2021, the government revised the penal code and expanded terrorism-related crimes to include those who challenge the government using dreamily defined “unconstitutional measures.” lake. United Nations expert And human rights group say has been used to prosecute peaceful activists.
“With this reform, they crushed Hirak,” Mr. Salhi said. He added that the terror allegations had caused deep fear as people were still traumatized by a civil war with Muslims in the 1990s that left 100,000 people dead.
The repression was harshly criticized last fall at the United Nations, when Algeria’s human rights record was reviewed.
But it remains unclear whether the condemnation will have a lasting effect on the country’s international standing. One of the world’s largest natural gas producers, Algeria has benefited from the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis that followed, building new partnerships with the West.
One accident, however, could be the country’s relationship with France, its longtime colonizer, which a the reunion has only just begun after decades of hatred over their troubled past.
After Madame Bouraoui fled under the protection of the French consulate, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Algeria accused France on facilitating the “illegal deportation of an Algerian citizen” and recalling its ambassador in Paris over the incident. Raising the stakes, the official Algerian news agency published a declare accused French secret services of seeking “a definitive break with Algeria.”
Bouraoui said she decided to flee to Tunisia after the editor of an independent radio station where she hosted the weekly show was arrested. accused of publishing articles threatening national security and imprisoned. “The noose is tightening,” she said.
She used her mother’s passport to cross the Tunisia-Algeria border anonymously, in a taxi. She was arrested a few days later at an airport in Tunis while trying to board a flight to France and will be tried last month on charges of illegally entering Tunisia. A Tunisian court sentenced her to three months in prison in absentia.
“Hope for change is huge during the 2019 Hirak period,” said Ms. Bouraoui. “The disillusionment today is just as great.”
