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Algeria Impunity in the Name of Reconciliation Algerian President’s Peace Plan Faces National Vote September 29 On August 15, the government of Algeria published the text of a long-promised “Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation” in the Journal Officiel. This came a day after a major speech by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announcing that Algerians will be asked to approve the Charter in a referendum on September 29. September 2, 2005 Also available in 
The United States' "Disappeared": The CIA's Long-Term "Ghost Detainees" In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, the Bush administration has violated the most basic legal norms in its treatment of security detainees. Many have been held in offshore prisons, the most well known of which is at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. As we now know, prisoners suspected of terrorism, and many against whom no evidence exists, have been mistreated, humiliated, and tortured. But perhaps no practice so fundamentally challenges the foundations of U.S. and international law as the long-term secret incommunicado detention of al-Qaeda suspects in “undisclosed locations.” October 12, 2004 Also available in 
Truth and Justice on Hold: The New State Commission on “Disappearances” On September 20, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced a new body to investigate the thousands of cases of persons who were "disappeared" during the civil strife of the 1990s and who remain unaccounted for. Since 1999 there have been only very isolated reports of new "disappearances." However, the state has not implemented legal and institutional safeguards surrounding arrest and detention procedures that would help to prevent the practice in the future. December 9, 2003 Download PDF Purchase online Time for Reckoning: Enforced Disappearances in Algeria, Algerian security forces made "disappear" at least 7,000 persons, more than the number recorded in any other country during the past decade except wartime Bosnia, Human Rights Watch said in a new report. To date, the Algerian authorities have utterly failed to investigate these "disappearances" or to provide families with answers about the fate of their loved ones. None of the missing has returned and no one has been held accountable for their "disappearance." The report, "Time for Reckoning: Enforced Disappearances in Algeria," also accuses armed groups that call themselves Islamist of kidnapping perhaps thousands of Algerians during the armed strife that ravaged the country since the early 1990s and cost over 100,000 lives. These armed groups, as well as state security services that carried out massive "disappearances," are guilty of crimes against humanity and should benefit neither from any amnesty or statute of limitations. At a time when Algerian authorities are seeking warmer relations with the United States and European Union, there are indications they want to "turn the page" on this problem. Notably, the new human rights commissioner, appointed by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, has spoken about a possible official apology and compensation to the families, but also amnesty for perpetrators. HRW Index No.: E1502 February 27, 2003 Download PDF Purchase online Algeria: Child Soldier Global Report 2001 From the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers There are no indications of under-18s in the government armed forces, but there have been reports of child participation in paramilitary ‘Legitimate Defence’ groups. Armed opposition groups are widely reported to have children in their ranks. June 12, 2001 Algeria: Landmine Monitor Report 2000 Algeria signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997 and called for "immediate and resolute action from all governments."74 Algeria has yet to ratify the treaty despite President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's assurances that "Algeria will be diligent in completing the ratification process of the Convention and guaranteeing its implementation, adapting, if so needed, its legislation."75 The ratification process appears to still be at the first stage of consideration by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, before it is sent to the Council of Ministers, National Assembly, and then to the Council of the Nation. August 1, 2000 Human Rights and Algeria's Presidential Elections A Human Rights Watch Background Paper Human Rights Watch issued a call today for human rights issues to occupy a central role in Algeria's presidential elections and in the post-election period. In a briefing paper released today, Human Rights Watch condemned the fact that no foreign election monitors have been authorized to observe the elections and that foreign journalists are either denied visas or restricted in their movements while in the country. The backgrounder also surveys the political violence that has claimed an estimated 77,000 lives since 1992, as well as the abductions and "disappearances" of thousands of Algerians, and government policies toward access to information that have dramatically limited independent monitoring of human rights conditions. April 9, 1999 Also available in
Printer friendly version Human Rights and Algeria's Presidential Election Human rights issues have occupied a prominent place in Algeria=s election campaign, now in its final week. At rallies, in interviews, and in speeches broadcast on national radio and television, several of the seven presidential candidates have spoken about the need to ensure the rule of law and independence of the judiciary, to end the state of emergency, address the fate of Algerians who have Adisappeared, and improve the status of women within society. April 1, 1999 Algeria's Human Rights Crisis On July 20-21, 1998, an Algerian government delegation met with the United Nations Human Rights Committee to discuss Algeria's second periodic report regarding its implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). In its oral presentation to the committee on July 20, the Algerian delegation insisted that "there was no crisis of human rights in Algeria" but rather "a terrorist phenomenon which violated human rights." After its review, the committee, in unusually strong language, characterized the Algerian situation precisely as a "widespread human rights crisis." HRW Index No.: E1003 August 1, 1998 Purchase online "Neither Among The Living Nor The Dead" State-Sponsored "Disappearances" In Algeria Among the many human rights tragedies in Algeria has been the "disappearance" of more than one thousand men and women since 1992, following their arrest by government forces. As with many acts of violence in Algeria, authorship of some cases of "disappearances" has been difficult to confirm. Armed Islamist groups are responsible for abductions as well as deliberate killings of thousands of civilians. However, there is overwhelming evidence that the security forces are carrying out "disappearances." They are doing so on such a wide scale that the practice could persist only with the sanction of the highest levels of authority. While Algerian officials have admitted that persons have "gone missing" in state custody, Human Rights Watch is aware of no high-level acknowledgment that the practice of forcible disappearance is rampant and ongoing, nor of any efforts by the Algerian authorities to bring to justice those responsible. HRW Index No.: E1001 February 4, 1998 Purchase online Elections in the Shadow of Violence and Repression Algerians went to the polls on June 5, 1997 in the first parliamentary elections since the military-backed government canceled elections in January 1992. That measure, taken to prevent a victory by the Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique du Salut, or FIS), plunged the country into endemic violence that continues today and has claimed more than 60,000 lives, most of them civilians. The government hoped that these elections would crown its efforts to assert its legitimacy at home and abroad, and remove the taint it incurred when the democratic process was interrupted in 1992. However, these elections cannot be seen as the capstone of the process of establishing democratic rule in Algeria, because of human rights issues that limit the significance of these elections as a free expression of the will of the Algerian people to choose those who would govern them. HRW Index No.: E904 June 1, 1997 Purchase online Six Months Later, Cover-Up Continues in Prison Clash that Left 100 Inmates Dead The Algerian government covered up how approximately 100 inmates died during thesuppression of an uprising at Serkadji prison in February 1995, the bloodiest incident during the first three years of civil strife in the country. Authorities violated the most basic norms for investigating extrajudicial killings: the dead were buried without autopsies; no truly independent panel was permitted to conduct an on-site investigation; and no specific explanations have been offered as to how the prisoners died. HRW Index No.: E705 August 1, 1995 Human Rights Abuses in Algeria No One Is Spared The Algerian government and the armed Islamist opposition it is fighting are each responsible for a severe deterioration in human rights conditions. This report highlights three areas of abuse: the grossly unfair trials before Special Courts that over the past ten months have resulted in nearly 400 death sentences for suspected Islamist militants; the deliberate killing of civilians by the armed resistance; and an assault on press freedom from two directions — heavy-handed government restrictions and violence by the armed opposition. HRW Index No.: 124X January 1, 1994 Human Rights in Algeria Since the Halt of the Electoral Process This report provides an overview of human rights developments since the declation of a 12-month state of emergency on February 9, 1992, after factions of the Algerian participated in a military coup of the government. February 27, 1992 Download PDF, 206 KB, 23 pgs Off Limits Censorship and Corruption Far from thanking their critics, governments go to great lengths to silence them. In Argentina, exposures of official corruption by a bold independent newspaper, Pagina 12, struck such a deep nerve that they triggered an amendment to the Penal Code, since withdrawn, that would curb "whistleblowers" by making it an offense to publish information about financial affairs, industry, the military, and many other matters without official permission. Sometimes a regime will even reach out beyond its own borders to punish a critic who exposes financial corruption. In June 1991, France expelled the Moroccan writer Abdelmoumen Diouri who had resided legally in France since the 1970's as a political refugee. The expulsion order provided no specific reasons for Diouri's expulsion, but the most probable reason is his criticism of Morocco's King. French authorities had urged him not to publish his forthcoming book, A Qui Appartient le Maroc? ( Who Owns Morocco?), which investigates the King's financial interests abroad and in various sectors of the Moroccan economy. Diouri returned to France in July after an administrative tribunal ruled that he had been wrongly deported. This report focuses on six countries around the world which in different ways illustrate the mechanisms of censorship through which governments formally and informally prevent reporting on the wealth of those in power. July 1, 1991 Download PDF, 344 KB, 62 pgs Printer friendly version
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