This extreme violence is something new. Until the beginning of the repressed civil war, a fundamentalist fatwa (order) held that women could only be killed if they were carrying arms. The first woman to be murdered by the fundamentalists was a police secretary. And it was only ten months later that an unarmed 17 year old high school student was assassinated at a bus stop, because she refused to wear a head-scarf. This sinister threat to all women who refused to obey the fundamentalist injunction to cover themselves failed. With the exception of those villages where the fundamentalists, in a traditionalist guise, hold total power, women continued to work and shop bareheaded, and, during the day, to occupy
PLaNTa Socialist Feminist assassinated It is with deep sadness that we learned of the assassination of our friend Nabila Djahnine at Tizi-Ouzou on 15 February 1995. Nabila was part of all the just struggles. Her political life started in the student struggle for democratic freedoms and against social descrimination in the education system. She was active in the women's associations of the late 1980s. She found herself at the podium during the general assemblies which prepared the second conference of the Berber Cultural Movement (MCB) in 1989. She was a member of the presidium of the meetings which founded the National Union of Algerian Students Autonomous and Democratic (SNEAAD). She was a founder-member and president of the Berber women's association Thighri n'Tmettuth (A Woman's Cry) in Tizi Ouzou. During all these years, Nabila was a member of the Socialist Workers Party (PST). She left the party in 1991, but we always met up with her wherever there was a social or democratic struggle. She was one of the rare militants who continued their activity, their struggle in Algeria, despite the dangers. She was always lively, and to her last day she refused to give in. The P.S.T. vigorously denounces this cowardly assassination, coming after so many unjust deaths, after so many painful wounds inflicted on the citizens, women and men, of our country. We share the pain of her family and her many friends, and we assure them of our solidarity. Algers, 15 February 1995 Statement of the Parti Socialiste des Travailleurs (PST - Socialist Workers' Party), the sympathising section of the Fourth International in Algeria
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International Viewpoint #264 MARCH 1995 the streets. Women smiled at other women they did not know, in this complicit resistance, so different from the joyous and noisy demonstrations of previous years. But as the number of women struck down alongside a farther, husband or brother singled out for execution as a civil servant or supporter of the regime increased, fear began to spread. The television brought pictures of bloody corpses, of slashed throats and opened stomachs. In November 1989 two young women in Birtoutat, near Algiers were kidnaped and raped. Their aggressors repented on television, describing the savage and primitive practices of the fundamentalist guerilla groups.
As the war against the "kuffars" (infidels) intensified, the various Islamic groups began to authorise rape and pillage as legitimate tactics to strike fear into the target groups: policemen, minor state officials, activists in the ruling parties, and intellectuals considered to support the regime. And their families.
The list of targets has widened and widened to include all of society. In August 1994 the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) threatened to punish all those who participated in the new school year - by attending school, by sending their children to school, or by continuing to teach. Despite the massive courage involved parents, pupils and teachers by and large resisted the GIA threats.
The most sincere moments of mass opposition to terrorism recently were the 22 March 1993 demonstration called by the trades union federation (UGTA) and the 22 March 1994 demonstration called
What can Algerian feminists do ? "As women are more and more the target of the fundamentalists, we have to take precautions. We have grouped ourselves into a network of personal contacts, and meet regularly, but rarely in the same place twice. We try above all to maintain solidarity through the exchange of information. This helps each of us overcome the isolation which generates fear and hopelessness. Some of our members live and work in the 'home' districts of the fundamentalists These women suffer the terror of armed fundamentalist groups every day. They have to cover themselves up even to walk to the corner of the road. They have to keep their opinions secret. For these women, our meetings are all that keeps them going. "We have started a discussion of the new violence against women, and we are collecting testimonies to make an inventory of the traditional and new forms of violence, from institutional violence against women to the rape and murder of the armed gangs. *Unfortunately, the traditional concern with unity inside the Algerian women's movement has very often prevented us from denouncing the self-styled leaders who are often presented abroad as our representatives. And this refusal to appear divided has meant that a whole section of the movement has struggled and acted in silence since January 1992, rather than polemicise with the great ladies of Algerian feminism, paraded before us on the French television. In Algeria today, militants continue to work, to teach in burned-out schools, even in the most risky districts and villages. Women and men sacked by the Post Office (PTT) participated in a hunger strike in October 1994. Women helped organise the oil workers strike in November, to negotiate the new union-company collective agreements for 1995 in December, and all the time to train up new feminist militants, to keep contacts and networks alive, to meet regularly, and to denounce the assassins as accurately as possible. 6 The last united initiative of women's groups was 22 March 1994. Many women wanted to organise a demonstration to protest against upsurge in assassinations. We agreed on a common declaration denouncing the violence of armed fundamentalist groups, and the blind repression of the regime. But the next day both the other organisations involved decided to withdraw their signatures from anything that denounced the behaviour of the regime. Had someone been to talk to them ? In any case, the final declaration was a one sided condemnation of fundamentalist terrorism, and a demand for an even more savage repression of the ISlamic fundamentalist milieu by the regime. For our group, this was a mistake. You can't build a democratic movement, like the women's movement, unless you denounce all the violations of human rights and summary executions which are raging in the country. Even if we denounce above all the savagery of the fundamentalists, we can't whitewash a regime which still treats women as legal minors through its repressive Code of the Family, and which is responsible for the growing misery and *We had planned to invite women to design a fresco on one of the squares of Algiers to commemorate International Women's Day this year. But the assassination of Nabila Djahnine has made us even more conscious of the danger women face. Whatever we do on 8 March, we will be thinking of Nabila, and the struggle she carried on up to her death... Assia F. is an active member of the Association for Women's Liberation (AEF) in Algiers. * by a number of women's groups. At the second of these demonstrations, the crowd was 2/3 female, calling for the right to life and the right to live differently.
Since then, funerals have been the main form of get-together, morbid as it may seem. Funerals are the main occasion for exchanging advice, and arranging support, solidarity, a departure.... Each of us, and especially the women, tries to recharge themselves from this contact -made so difficult by the need for security.
The assassination of Nabila Djahnine (see page 5), the president of a women's association, seems to mark a new phase. By targeting her, all women militants have been threatened. The fundamentalist groups no longer seek to isolate the regime internationally, and isolate it from the population. They increasingly seek to kill in the womb all elements of opposition to their will, to their conquest of power. *
Algiers, 25 February 1995