The Administrative Court of Algiers delivered the dissolution of the Youth Actions (RAJ), which had been the first ranks of the hirak.
Le Monde with AFP
Gathering Youth Actions (RAJ), an important organization of Algerian civil society, was punished by the Administrative Court of Algiers for the alleged violation of the Associations Act. The Tribunal delivered on Wednesday, October 13, the dissolution of the NGO, which had been the first ranks of the Hirak Prodémocracy Movement, learned the France-Presse agency (AFP) to the Algerian League for the defense of the rights of the rights. man (LADDH). An administrative penalty that follows a request from the Algerian Ministry of Interior demanding the dissolution of Raj.
“This verdict is not weakening us, will not erase the twenty-eight years of existence, resistance and struggle for citizenship, freedom and democracy,” reacted the raj in a statement, announcing that his lawyers would appeal.
“It’s scandalous,” said Said Salhi, Vice President of the LADDH. “Stop attacks on the democratic achievements of the Algerian people, paid at the price of the ultimate sacrifice,” said Salhi, who expressed the “solidarity” of the LADDH with the activists of the RAJ. The authorities accounted for the NGO “to act in violation of the Associations Act and in contradiction with the objectives listed in the statutes”.
“Unjust and aberrant decision”
In a statement published at the end of September, the RAJ rejected these charges, “[founded] mainly on the public activities of the association during the Hirak”. The NGO had qualified its various actions of “compatible” with “its mandate of association working to promote the involvement of young people in the management of the city”. “Despite this unjust and aberrant decision, the Raj will fight and defend the association so that it continues to exist on the ground,” continued it in its communiqué.
Several members of the RAJ, including its President, Abdelouahab Fersaoui, aged 39, have been prosecuted, and up to nine of them were incarcerated. Sentenced to one year in prison for “undermining the integrity of the national territory”, Mr. Fersaoui served six months in prison between the end of 2019 and May 2020, who corresponded to the sentence pronounced on appeal.
The LADDH “calls for respect for the law and freedom of association and organization, angular stone of all democracy,” said Salhi. The Algerian law frame the work of the associations, promulgated in 2012, submits their creation to the prior issuance of an accreditation by the authorities. This law had been approved in the context of political reforms undertaken by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, recently dead, to cut short to any contagion of the “Arab Spring”, in 2011.