by Abdelalim MEDJAOUI, contribution to the history of Algeria by one of its actors.
In Memoriam
Algeria: French department but nevertheless subject to the Code of Indigénat. In the extension of the “Black Code” of slavery, a codification on the basis of Gobino Darwinist criteria. A specificity of the “Homeland of Human Rights” https://histoirecoloniale.net/le-code-de-l-indigenat-dans-l.html
Abdelalim Medjaoui: Former Moudjahid of Wilaya III- Al Soummam Sector, former contributor to the newspaper “Alger Républicain”.
A medical student from 1954 to 1957, Abdelalim MEDJAOUI had to interrupt his studies when he was arrested in 1959, when he had joined the Algerian guerrilla where he served in the medical service of the Algerian National Liberation Army. Sentenced to 5 years in prison, Abdelalim MEDJAOUI was released in 1961, on the eve of Algeria’s independence. A member of the Algerian Communist Party, he claimed his membership in this underground party in 1989, at the time of the regime’s first major crisis. He was subsequently a columnist for the newspaper “Alger Républicain”. The historic Wilaya III is one of the seven wilayas of the Algerian war located in Kabylia. Among its leaders were the following personalities: Krim Belkacem, Saïd Mohammedi, Mohand Ameziane Yazourene, Amirouche Aït Hamouda, Abderrahmane Mira, Mohand Oulhadj.
To you two, in particular, my brothers Mustapha Lyassine (our central pharmacist, at the health service of zone 1-wilaya 3) and Ramdane Rédjouani (Si Moh), who fell on the field of honor for the freedom of Algeria, I feel today, on the occasion of the 64th anniversary of the historic strike launched by UGEMA, the duty to greet your souls and to talk to you about the concerns of our country.
Sixty-four years in the life of an individual is the age when, rich in a substantial life experience, he (or she) can look himself straight in the eye and pass a calm judgment on his career. What about a nation and particularly its intellectual component?
Sixty-four years have passed since the day when – in the midst of the barbarism of the “Algerian war” – Algerian students from the University of Algiers decided to strike for classes and exams. We made this decision after an adversarial debate during a general public assembly held under the aegis of the Algiers section of our very young organization, UGEMA, and on behalf of all Algerian students in Algiers …
… Whose number, in this year 1956, did not exceed 500 – out of some 5,000 students at the University of Algiers, the only university in the country! – convincing number of the “civilizing work of imperial France” after 132 years of colonial occupation!
Why have we made such a serious decision then?
Our people’s war of resistance for their national liberation was one and a half years old. The savagery of the repression opposed to it by the colonial enemy reached its peaks and could not leave indifferent the intellectuals, a growing number of whom were enlisting and then found themselves at grips with the police services, not in the bush, but in the cities. : kidnappings, torture, disappearances were increasing. The officials of the UGEMA section of Algiers were out of town, intervening with the families to find their trace and, with the lawyers led by the late Mohamed Benyahia, denounce as illegal their arrests, carried out under the cover of the brand new ” special powers ”. Soon we begin to find the terribly mutilated corpses thrown in the streets or thrown back by the sea…!
And it is to denounce these abominable crimes of our intellectual brothers and to show solidarity with them and their commitment that we adopted the detailed Appeal presented by the section after our General Assembly seriously debated it. (I give the appeal in the appendix).
What was the meaning of this decision?
The strike declared by Algerian students on May 19, 1956 is one of the most important political acts of our national liberation war. She has had a huge impact on young people around the world.
How did the gesture of such a small number of individuals have such resonance?
A large number of intellectuals (doctors, pharmacists, and other health personnel, students, lawyers, etc.) had already made a personal commitment with the men of November, without waiting for the Appeal of the UGEMA… This commitment is certainly became more apparent when the UGEMA took the defense of those among them who were arrested …
But when the UGEMA institution (through its sectional committee of Algiers) solemnly expressed its solidarity with them, it expressed the position of the national collective intellectual in the face of the dirty war waged by the French army of reoccupation. However, this institution only represented some 500 people, no more!
Until then, the colonial authorities and their mobilized press presented this insurrection as the act of marginalized people, highwaymen, murderers without faith or law. People, and especially young people around the world will find out, and how! the reality of this war for the liberation of our people.
By this strike of studies and exams at the University, by this refusal of what represented the pride of French culture, UGEMA denounced in the eyes of young people of student organizations around the world, the worst enterprise of abuses, d villainous assassinations perpetrated in the name of the national interest, which this “flag”, with La Marseillaise, unduly covered! and therefore showed them the righteousness of the struggle of our people.
How did the students acquire the institution that UGEMA was?
The settlement by November 1 of the crisis of the national movement, the emergence of a new generation of students, like the late Mohamed Benyahia, created a new atmosphere within the movement of nationalist students, then organized in the old AEMAN.
This matrix is all the more outdated with the prospect of the independence of their countries, the Moroccan and Tunisian brothers have emerged from it to create their own unions: UNEM and UGET.
Already, in Paris, the Algerian communist students, around the strong personality of Ahmed Inal, supported by Mohamed Harbi and Jewish students from Algeria, had set up in 1955 the UGEA of Paris …
“It is in this particular context that at the start of the 1954-1955 academic year, Brother Belaïd Abdesslam launched the idea of creating UGEMA, and from Paris, asked the leading brothers of AEMAN ( …) in Algiers to initiate a campaign in favor of the creation of the UGEMA and to launch an appeal to this end for the holding of a preparatory conference, which was actually held in Paris from April 4 to 7, 1955.
This conference which passionately debated doctrinal problems finally came out, by an overwhelming majority, in favor of the nationalist thesis, that is to say for the creation of the UGEMA, and rejected the concept of the UGEA. “1 (…)
In July, the constitutive congress of the UGEMA was held in Paris… The debates on the “doctrinal problems” evoked by Mr. Aït Chaalal are known under the name of “battle of the M” of the UGEMA, in which was illustrated the late Rédha Malek during his tour through French university towns in front of the Algerian students who were registered there, defending “a historical and nationalist vision of Algeria”.
The congress elected an executive committee with, at its head, Ahmed Taleb, contrary to the tradition which made of this position an achievement of the PPA-MTLD; result of intimate changes in the national intellectual environment and reflection of the unitary spirit of the FLN (Abbane). It was a “considerable event in the Algerian student community and also in French university circles. Everyone realized that in the context of the liberation war that began on November 1 around national principles and objectives, this meant the gathering and mobilization of Algerian students, as well as their ineluctable commitment to the fight initiated by their people. “
However, the UGÉMA, was constituted within the framework of the French legality (law of 1901); and officially declared itself as a union charged with “defending the moral and material interests of students.”
But it nonetheless stated in its resolutions politico-cultural objectives which left no doubt as to its motivations and its main ideological options, namely:
the fight against colonialist domination, the safeguard and defense of the historical Algerian personality, the restoration and development of the Arab-Muslim heritage of the Algerian people. ”
Thus, the inaudible AEMAN section of Algiers will undergo a transmutation to make heard, as the UGEMA section of Algiers, the loud voice of the Algerian collective intellectual in the new course of the country’s history: defending, as mentioned above, the pioneering commitment of those of his family who had joined November, denouncing their illegal kidnapping despite the permissiveness newly established by the “special powers”, the barbarity of the treatment they were subjected to … at the end of which their bodies were thrown into nature (Dr Benzerdjeb) or thrown back by the sea (Zeddour…). An arm wrestling between an earthenware pot – which made its shock heard very far in international opinion and an iron pot – on the defensive, therefore, despite everything – …
The life of the UGEMA and the students became more complicated in this year 1955, but they did not cease “to militate without slackening or weakness, facing with courage and determination all the provocations and exactions emanating from extremists and right-wing activists” in addition of the army of reoccupation, remaining “in perfect harmony with the political line drawn by the leadership of the FLN-ALN.”
This pushes the leadership of the Union to put its line in line with the situation. This happened at the 2nd congress that it held in Paris2 from March 24 to 30, 1956: “a decisive turning point[est] taken by our union; It is on this occasion that she solemnly affirms her political position vis-à-vis the war waged by France against our people by claiming:
- The proclamation of the independence of Algeria;
- The release of all political detainees;
- Negotiations with the FLN. So[s’opère] a reversal of priorities in the UGÉMA’s approach: politics takes precedence over the trade union: the union has obviously become a combat unit within the framework of the struggle for national independence led by the national liberation front. “
A few weeks after this event, another of capital importance will mark the life of the Union. The strike of May 19, 1956, the noise of which resounds high in the sky, especially since the commitment which should only concern the students of the University of Algiers is endorsed by those of the universities of France, and at the same time time, in Algeria, by high school students and even schoolchildren …
French culture is singled out by its connection with the inhuman war from which it must distance itself, especially when the persecutions affect intellectuals who believed they were part of it … Especially since, the UGEMA, by “The declaration [de son] The steering committee wanted to avoid any confusion or ambiguity by specifying that the strike could not be interpreted as a mark of hostility towards the French university and even less as a denial of a culture to which Algerian students remained very sincerely attached. “
The face of the fight of the FLN, through the fight of the UGEMA
This is “a conscious and collective commitment of the students in the liberation struggle by making themselves totally available in the service of the revolution.”
UGEMA is banned and its leaders prosecuted. Most of them clandestinely join abroad (Tunis and Morocco), from where they organize the new life of the Union and of the students.
Many of whom, also hunted down, reach more lenient skies, where thanks to the support provided to them by foreign student organizations, they may be entitled to a scholarship and to enrollment in universities around the world. And of course, they set up the sections of the Union in their host country …
This support owes everything to “the meteoric reaction of the international student movement which, a few weeks after the dissolution[de l’Union] , actively mobilized in favor of UGEMA and the Algerian cause ”:
– In April 1958, the National Union of Great Britain Students organized an extraordinary international meeting in London “under the aegis of the International Student Conference (CIE-Cosec) bringing together student organizations from the Western world (…) Twenty -two national unions participated. “
– In May, the International Union of Students (UIE), bringing together the Unions of Eastern Europe and a large number of Unions from Third World countries, in turn organizes a week of solidarity with Algerian students.
Note that neither of the two international organizations, ideologically rivals, asks the UGEMA to align with its positions, out of respect for its fight: their support goes to the justice of the Algerian cause …
In addition to studying – in the language of the host country! – who will make of them valid executives in independent Algeria, the students thus invited make known the struggle of the Algerian people. Thus they participate in the life of their Union, a life organized democratically, holding general assemblies around the political line of the Union, electing by secret ballot the leaders of their section, delegating representatives to Congress (there was a 3rd then a 4th) where this line is discussed, in perfect cohesion with that of the FLN-ALN, which respects this organic autonomy whose effects are reflected on it …
… Until this year 1961-62, when the tight struggles for power changed the situation. I remember having spent this painful year having had to defend3 our UGEMA section in Belgium – where we had a storefront! – against the corporal attacks of the French Federation of the FLN.
We did not understand then that the affair exceeded the militants that we were all. We will find out at the end of the academic year, when we learn that the GPRA (or rather its “centralist” tendency which had succeeded in drawing Krim into the scheme) ordered that the management of the UGEMA return the apron … order was signed by Krim and Mehri …
This coup against the UGEMA to which I was bound by the democratic functioning was perpetrated by the “apparatuses” of the Revolution – the Federation of France and the GPRA – to which I was linked by the militancy that they have all over me. simply “withdrawn”, as if I had elected them to charge them with this possibility of punishing me …
The men who composed them remain for me quite respectable …
Acronyms:
- AEMAN: Association of Muslim Students of North Africa
- UNEM: National Union of Moroccan Students
- UGET: General Union of Tunisian Students
- UGEA: General Union of Algerian Students
ANNEX 1
Testimony on the history of UGEMA, by Babak Amir Khosorovi, Former member of the Secretariat of the International Union of Students-UIE *.
Dear friends!
It is a great honor for me to participate in this ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the creation of UGEMA.
The day I first met the founders of UGEMA in the little Parisian café in the Latin Quarter, half a century ago, I never imagined the consequences that would have on my life. The most important thing for me are the very deep and lasting bonds of friendship between the leaders of this student movement and myself. Friendship and solidarity which have been consolidated in the fight for freedom and justice.
I never believed that I would be alive half a century later and have the pleasure of meeting all these friends, who like me with white hair and curvy waists, come together and meet today. Thank you comrades for providing us with this opportunity under the best possible conditions.
When my old and dear friend Mr. Jemal Houhou told me about this anniversary and invited me to attend, accepting it with pleasure, I reviewed this half-century of relationship and recalled my memories. Among them are the circumstances of my first contact with UGEMA which deserve to be recalled.
At that time, I represented the Union of Students of the University of Tehran in the International Union of Students, whose headquarters were in Prague. I was head of the anti-colonialism department which had been created on my initiative.
The UIE Congress was approaching. My mission was to go to Paris to contact student organizations from colonized countries, choose them and invite them to attend the next UIE Congress which was to take place in September 1956 in Prague. Before my departure for Paris, Mr. Serge DEPAQUI, the representative of communist students within the UIE secretariat gave me the contact details of the late Mr. Inal. At that time, Inal was an Algerian communist youth militant and had founded the General Union of Algerian Students!
We had at the UIE secretariat some ambiguous information on Algerian Muslim students who had founded their own organization. My mission was to meet them too and to provide a report on the situation of Algerian students. It should be remembered that at that time, the Algerian people’s liberation movement was little known in the world. We were at the beginning of the insurrection of the Algerian people.
In Paris, Inal presented me with his organization as being democratic and open to all political tendencies and religious beliefs. Upon learning of my intentions to meet UGEMA, Inal spoke about UGEMA defining it as a sectarian organization, limited to students of Muslim faith! while he described his organization UGEA as being open to all students without discrimination. Inal argued that at the faculty of Algiers, Catholic, Muslim and Jewish students coexisted together, and that his organization corresponded to this reality. According to him the UGEMA was going to divide the students while what the movement needed was unity! At first glance, his reasoning and approach to the problem seemed logical.
But I wanted to listen to the leaders of UGEMA.
With the help of those in charge of the organization of students from North Africa, I made an appointment with UGEMA. It was our sacred Réda MALEK who was there, as secretary general of the organization.
You know him better than I do. Malek with his imposing appearance, his powerful and lively voice and above all his strong logic in his reasoning, made me realize the essence of the problem.
The word “Muslim,” Malek argued, is not motivated by religious bigotry. And is absolutely not an attitude of discrimination, vis-à-vis others. He explained to me that in the struggle for national liberation, Islam is the most important element of national identity in the struggle against the French Catholic colonialists. And it is a simple language to mobilize the fellagas.
He stressed that the doors of UGEMA are open to everyone without discrimination. I had a second conversation with AIT CHALAAL. The same arguments and reasoning, but a different style. A refined speech, nuanced with calm, a diplomatic language, which deeply penetrated my heart.
For me, originally from a Muslim country, and who had just emerged from a great liberation movement in another country, Malek’s speech resonated with me. My decision was made instantly. I felt like a moral obligation to support this movement being engaged in a just but terribly unequal struggle. But I had to convince the UIE secretariat, everyone being a communist, representing either student organizations from socialist countries or others and being a priori in favor of the organization founded by Mr. Inal!
At that time I myself was a member of the Toudeh party of Iran, also a communist! What to do? I turned to Mr. Inal with the hope of convincing him, to join UGEMA and to put myself at the service of the national liberation movement. But in vain and without result at the time!
I learned a few months later, that Mr. Inal joined the FLN, without the consent of his party, and that he had become political commissar of the Oran region and that he died, weapon in hand in the battlefield, as a martyr of the Algerian revolution!
My report to the UIE was like an explosion! Because I reasoned and asked that we invite only UGEMA, as the only representative of Algerian students to the UIE congress! There was really no ill will among the members of the Secretariat.
The insurrection of November 1 was not yet sufficiently known and recognized in the world. We were still at the time of French Algeria.
The secretariat meeting was tense, and subsequently suspended. I put on the scale all my weight as head of the anti-colonial department, but above all it was thanks to the effective help of the unforgettable deceased Jiri PELIKAN, our president, that I was able to get my secretariat to accept. conclusion. Pelikan, was a far-sighted, remarkable, intelligent, open-minded man, a man of compromise. His place is really empty today among us.
The presence of the UGEMA delegation at the UIE Congress in Prague was a very important event in the world student movement. It should not be forgotten that the UIE was the first world organization to recognize UGEMA on a global scale. This congress was attended by a delegation from UNEF for the first time, after several years of severance of its relationship with the UIE. I remember the tension of the moment when the UGEMA delegation went up to the podium and spoke! Amidst the ovation of the delegates, the UNEF delegation left the room. Fortunately their relationship improved thereafter.
The presence of several former leaders of UNEF in this 50th anniversary ceremony is proof of this.
Undoubtedly the foundation of UGEMA and its entry into the international movement of students and its fight, in the many international meetings defending the cause of the Algerian people for independence, and also for those of all the other oppressed countries, contributed to the awareness of students all over the world, and in particular politicized French students and UNEF.
My friendship with the Algerian militants began thus and was consolidated over time, in our common fight for the independence of Algeria and the freedom of all the oppressed peoples of Asia and Africa. Over time, our relationship has surpassed the stage of a formal relationship of a leader of an international organization with the leaders of a national organization. We became friends, close friends, with great affection and also complicity in solving the problems that arose in the congresses and many international meetings.
As an example, this happened shortly after at the Afro-Asian Student Conference in Bandung! With the unforgettable deceased BEN YAHIA, our complicity was formed around a crucial and very important problem for us, to pass a resolution condemning colonialism! It may surprise you. But it was the Chinese delegation that wanted to avoid it! Their reasoning was simple. If there is opposition, even from the delegation of one country, the resolution must be abandoned.
Because according to the Chinese comrades, the very fact of this first meeting of students from Asia and Africa and the expression of their unity seemed to be the most important.
It was in 1959 that I had the pleasure of meeting my charming friend Mr. Belaïd ABDESSALAM in Prague who wanted my help to solve certain important problems of Algerian scholarship holders in Eastern countries. My attachment to the cause of the Algerian people and my commitment to UGEMA within the UIE secretariat was such that one day, Mr. Pélikan laughing asked me: Are you representative of the UIE with UGEMA or that of UGEMA within the UIE secretariat?
Remembering and recounting my memories with other valiant leaders of UGEMA such as Ait Chaalal, Jemal Houhou, Taleb, the late Khémisti, Abdelaoui, Hamdi and many others, who are present here, would take a long time.
But I am making a short stop on some events that arose after the independence of Algeria! In 1963 I was in Moscow with Ben Yahia! But this time he was an ambassador and I was a student! He helped me to make about thirty of my Iranian compatriots, specialists in different fields, immigrant politicians without papers, who could no longer bear to live in this so-called “earthly paradise”, expatriate to Algeria.
It should be remembered that Ben Yahia later gave his life, so valiant, in a peace mission for my country.
In the summer of 1964 I was in independent Algeria with a false passport, because my Iranian passport was confiscated by the Iranian embassy in Tunisia; I was honored by Mr. Jamel Houhou who gave me an Algerian national passport.
In 1969, after the spring tragedy in Prague, I could no longer breathe the air of “socialist” countries. I wanted to leave the GDR to settle in the West. My handicap, among other things, was the trap set by the SAVAK by manipulating a file by Interpol, wrought from scratch, to stop me and surrender me to the Iranian authorities! I took the risk by taking the plane to Paris!
Réda Malek, ambassador of his country in Paris, on hearing the news, came with my lawyer, to the foot of the plane with the intention of intervening in case I was arrested on my descent. plane!
During my trial in Paris, Réda Malek, as his country’s ambassador, wrote an excellent letter, testifying on my behalf.
The same gesture of friendship and solidarity was made by Aît Chaalal, also Ambassador to Italy! I will never forget this gesture of loyalty in friendship and the meaning of their solidarity at a difficult time in my life.
Dear friends! Thank you again for honoring me by inviting me to attend this very important anniversary and by giving me the opportunity to bear this testimony.
Thank you and congratulations.
* Intervention at the anniversary ceremony (50th) of UGEMA in Tlemcen.
APPENDIX 2
Appeal of the UGEMA of May 19, 1956.
“After the assassination of our brother Zeddour Belkacem by the French police, after the murder of our elder brother Dr. Benzerdjeb, after the tragic end of our young brother Brahimi from the college of Bougie, burned alive in his mechta set on fire by the army French during the Easter holidays, after the summary execution in a group of hostages of our eminent writer Rédha Houhou, secretary of the Ben Badis Institute of Constantine, after the odious tortures that were subjected to Doctors Haddam of Constantine , Baba-Ahmed and Tobbal de Tlemcen, after the arrests of our comrades, Amara, Lounis, Saber and Taouti, today torn from the jails of the French administration, that of our comrades Zerrouki and Mahdi, after the deportation of our comrade Hihi, after the intimidation campaigns against the UGEMA, here is the police tearing us from the hands, one morning at the first hour, our brother Ferhat Hadjadj, student in propaedeutics and master of boarding school at the high school of Ben Aknoun, the torture, the sequestration for more than ten days, with the complicity of justice and the high Algerian administration, informed of his case, until the day when we learn appalled, under the blow of the emotion, the news of his slaughter by the Jijel police assisted by the local militia.
Will the warning given by our magnificent strike of January 20, 1956 have served no purpose? Indeed, with an additional diploma, we will not make better corpses! …
What would be the use of these diplomas that we continue to be offered, while our people fight heroically, while our mothers, our wives, our sisters are raped, while our children, our old people, fall under the grape-shot, the bombs, napalm?
And we the executives of tomorrow, what are we offered to supervise? to supervise who?… the ruins and heaps of corpses no doubt, those of Constantine, Tébessa, Philippeville, Tlemcen and other places already belonging to the epic of our country.
Our passivity in the face of the war being waged before our eyes makes us complicit in the vile accusations of which our valiant National Army is the object. The false peace in which we are installed no longer satisfies our conscience.
Our duty calls us to daily suffering, alongside those who fight and die free in the face of the enemy.
We all observe the immediate strike of classes and exams and for an indefinite period.
We must desert the university benches for the maquis.
We must join en masse the National Liberation Army and its organization a policy the FLN.
Algerian students and intellectuals, for the world which observes us, for the nation which calls us, for the heroic destiny of our country, are we renegades? “
The General Union of Algerian Muslim Students.
To go further in the same section Decryption:
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