Letter of protestation on arrival of Algerian President Bouteflika on British soil

PRESS RELEASE

Letter of protestation on arrival of Algerian President Bouteflika on British soil

AL KARAMA, 11/07/2006

Al-Karama has written an open letter to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair registering protest at the arrival of Algerian President Bouteflika.

The Algerian government is a dictatorship that has been abusing human rights since a military coup in 1991. The government has been a disaster for the people of Algeria, not only at an individual level, but also to wider society and the entire state. Since the coup there have been over 200,000 deaths as a result of actions instigated by the military regime.

The current regime has completely refused to admit what has been done in the past, and further has given complete impunity to those responsible. With so many abuses of human rights taking place, the Western world has turned a blind eye due to vested interests in oil, gas and the War on Terror.

Al-Karama UK is requesting from Prime Minister Tony Blair and the British government:

1. Stop torture, arbitrary detention and extra judicial killings;

2. Hold fully accountable those who have committed gross human rights violations in Algeria;

3. End the government pressure on the press and restrictions on the right of freedom of association;

4. Terminate the state of emergency;

5. The immediate organisation of free and fair elections under the scrutiny of international observers

Al Karama is a non-governmental organisation working to highlight and stop abuses of human rights in the Arab world.

CONTACT: Mohamed Larbi Zitout

spokesman

PHONE: 0044 (0) 2074020 500

EMAIL: [email protected]

An Open Letter To Tony Blair,

Dear Prime Minister,

We, the undersigned, protest in the strongest terms to your government’s decision to officially welcome Algerian president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, to the United Kingdom this week.

Since coming to power in 1997, your Government has prided itself on promoting human rights and democratisation across the world, declaring its desire to « put human rights at the heart of our foreign policy ». Rather than promoting the ideals of freedom and democracy you say you cherish, the current relationship between Britain and Algeria further illustrates, alongside punitive anti-terror laws, the relegation of the human rights agenda under New Labour.

President Bouteflika’s administration is a dictatorship with the facade of being a democracy, serving as a cover for the Algerian army generals’ firm grasp on the control of the state. At the end of 1991, the Islamic Salvation Front, known as FIS, swept to an overwhelming victory in the first round of Algeria’s first and only fair parliamentary elections, promising an end to the military-backed government, and its rampant corruption. With their substantial interests threatened the military responded with a coup d’Etat: FIS activists and leaders were arrested by their thousands and transported to concentration camps in the Sahara, a state of emergency (still ongoing) was declared, the president was deposed, and the elections were cancelled.

The resulting civil war claimed the lives of over 200,000 people (as Bouteflika recently acknowledged), more than fifteen thousand were “disappeared”, nearly two million were internally displaced, and another 1 million people exiled (among them, over than 50 thousand to the UK).

Like you, Prime Minister, President Bouteflika is also concerned about the length of his term in office. Unlike you, he is not planning to go anytime soon, organising a referendum to change the constitution on ending limits to the number of terms he can ‘run’ as president.

Algeria’s human rights record is appalling. Although President Bouteflika has been praised as peacemaker by the West, his Charter for Peace and Reconciliation, codified in February 2006, has been criticised by human rights groups as a shame. Under the agreement military personnel implicated in serious crimes enjoy what amounts to an unconditional amnesty (article 45), hailed as patriots who « helped save Algeria ». It is a cynical ploy to stifle investigations into the sinister role played by the government security forces in ‘disappearances’, civilian massacres such as the one at Bentalha in 1998, and even the Paris metro bombing of 1995, all previously blamed squarely on Islamic militants.

This has major implications for bilateral ties including the Memorandum of Understanding initialled by the two countries in June 2006, allowing the UK to circumvent international laws on torture and return suspected Algerian ‘terrorists’ for interrogation in return for assurances to the UK government that Algeria will not torture any detainees handed over to them. Despite more than a year of negotiations between your government and Algeria, Prime Minister, you have not managed to get a single piece of paper guaranteeing Algeria’s commitment to its part of the bargain. In any case, Amnesty International’s documentation of cases of torture techniques like ‘chiffon’ (choking the victim), and the barring of inspections of high security prisons and detention centres, makes any assurances to the UK completely groundless.

We demand that you look beyond the opportunity to benefit from the oil and gas resources of Algeria, noted in the Foreign Office’s country profile report as « important in the context of UK’s energy … strategy », and instead demand that you take this opportunity to issue a new Memorandum of Understanding, one that makes clear that the UK will have no relationship with Algeria until it has carried as a minimum requirement, the following actions and reforms:

– Stop torture, arbitrary detention and extra judicial killings;
– Hold fully accountable those who have committed gross human rights violations in Algeria;
– End the government pressure on the press and restrictions on the right of freedom of association;
– Terminate the state of emergency;
– The immediate organisation of free and fair elections under the scrutiny of international observers.

Mohamed Larbi Zitout, former Algerian Deputy Ambassador (Libya, 91-95), Spokesperson for Al-Karama
Abdallah Anass, representative of the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front)
Mohamed Denideni, Algerian journalist and political dissident.
Jamal Lazibi, member of the FIS
Yvonne Ridley, Journalist and patron of Stop Political Terror
Ann Gray, CAMPACC
Adnan Siddiqui, Cageprisoners
Saghir Hussain, Human Right Lawyer

Press Contact
Mohamed Larbi Zitout
Al-Karama (For Human Rights in the Arab world)
95 Praed Street, London
W2 1NT
Tel. 0207 4020500
Mobile. 07939 028 027