Berber Spring

The Berber Printemps indicates the whole of the demonstrations claiming the officialization of the language Tamazight and the recognition of the identity and the language Berbère in Algérie as from March 1980 in Kabylie and with Algiers. It is about the first popular movement of opposition to the authorities since the independence of the country in 1962.

Causes

The berbérophones represent of a quarter to a third of the Algerian population. Since the independence of this country, the Arab succeeds the French like official language. The Algerian linguistic policy results in a massive Arabisation of the administration and teaching.

The reflection on the linguistic situation is initially the fact of intellectuals expatriates (Taos Amrouche, Mouloud Mammeri and of the members of the Berber Académie).

Inside the country, it is in Kabylie that the most important concentration of berbérophones is. The university of Tizi-Ouzou, created in this area in 1977, is a place of exchange, including on the cultural level. As elsewhere, the organization of Debate S and Concert S, as well as the representation of part S in language Berbère are subjected there to authorization - in addition often refused.

Events

March 10th 1980: the persons in charge of Wilaya of Tizi Ouzou cancel a conference of the writer Mouloud Mammeri on the old Poésie Kabyle. The people at the origin of this decision refuse to be explained - it would be about an emanating order of the State.

March 11th: demonstrations with Tizi Ouzou, strikes in Kabylie and with Algiers.

April 7th: imposing demonstration in Algiers. Repression is wild and the day shows a hundred arrests, many casualties and perhaps a death. Other gatherings take place in several cities in Kabylie.

April 7th: beginning of the strike with the university of Tizi Ouzou.

April 8th: another demonstration converges towards Algiers, but without violent reactions of the police force.

April 10th: general strike in Kabylie. The studied trade union (UNJA) near to the government, denounces radio-controlled demonstrators “of outside”.

April 17th: in a speech, the Algerian president Chadli Bendjedid states that Algeria is an “Arab, Moslem, Algerian” country, and that “the democracy does not mean anarchy”. The same day, the strikers are expelled of the hospital of Tizi Ouzou and the buildings of the SONELEC.

April 23rd: the university of Tizi Ouzou is taken by storm by the police force during the operation Mizrana .

The movement continues in favor of the 24 prisoners (of which Saïd Saadi, Mouloud Lounaouci, Mustapha Bacha, Saïd Khelil, Djamel Zenati, Ali Brahimi, Salah Boukrif…) and manages to make them release in June. Consequently, the Berber movement hold of sitted at August at the time of the Seminar of Yakouren. It decides to capitalize the projection of its ideas in the social body by multiplying the activities of ground by the peaceful way.

Thus, as of the back to university of October 1980, each university campus of the center of the country obtains a cultural collective in load of the promotion of the Berber cultural activities in academic world. As of January 1981, many colleges follow. Theater, committed songs abound and express an unexpected boiling at the descendants of the “Jughurta Eternal”. But it is the considerable success of the " wild courses of berbère" animated by Salem Chaker with the Central Faculty of Algiers and by Mustapha Benkhemou at the University of Bab Ezzouar and in the Institutes of Boumerdes which pushes the Algerian authorities to put the holà. A coarse police provocation is the pretext with the arrest of 22 students including 3 recidivists (Arezki Has Larbi, Mustapha Bacha and Salah Boukrif), like Mustapha Benkhemou and Abderrezzak Hamouda (the son of the glorious Colonel If El Houas) of Me chounech in the Aurès.

Consequences

Politically, Berber Spring is the first spontaneous popular movement. It opens the way with a questioning of the Algerian mode. These riots precede those of Constantine in 1986 and of Algiers in 1988.

On the social plan, the movement represents the emergence of a generation of intellectuals engaged in the democratic combat (Tahar Djaout, Ferhat…).

On the cultural level, Berber Spring breaks the linguistic and cultural taboo: it is the translation of a questioning of the intensive Arabisation of the administration to the detriment of the Berbère. This identity awakening also touched the close Morocco, where these events are commemorated each year by the students berbérophones.

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