IN SUPPORT OF ALGERIAN WOMEN - PETITION
Power responds with disdain to the Algerian women's movement who is fighting against Islamic fundamentalism. In order to defend their rights, women are asking for a profound transformation of the Family Code.
In the midst of the debates which are stirring international opinion, the struggle of Algerian women is always at the false door. They cannot ignore fundamentalist violence, because they have been the primary victims for some time. Similarly, they cannot ignore the nature of the ruling power, which has clearly manifested its anti-democratic character by imposing the archaic and notorious Family Code. Women themselves are, somehow, the cornerstone between two buildings and the very sign of their mutual collusion.
They know that there are Muslims who kill in Algeria because during the 70s they threw vitriolic acid to women students in the name of Islam; in 1974-75 women were beaten with bicycle chains, iron bars, or disfigured with razor blades. Over the 80s, they have seen how schools and mosques have become platforms for the discourse of hate and death against women.
They have seen brothers kill their sisters, inspired by such speeches (Relizane); criminal fires against lone women's houses (in Quargla, one of these women's baby was burned alive). Therefore they know perfectly well what the fundamentalist movement is capable of. This is an ideological and political movement which cannot justify itself exclusively by social depravation and political isolation. A movement which imposes segregation between men and women; the suppression of public spaces for women, leaving women under curfew and at their mercy.
The atrocious crimes which women are victims of at the fundamentalist maquis are an extreme confirmation of their status as slaves. But women also know that the National Popular Assembly gave the Islamic movement a "wedding present" when in 1984 they brought about the most archaic Family Code there is. Women also know that the new Algerian government hasn't changed anything, doesn't want to change anything, in spite of its promises.
Women know that the situation cannot wvolve without a democratic evolution,
and that the first democratic advance would be for their rights to
be recognised. They know they cannot do without their full citizenship
and equality laws, both in the public and private space.
They reject the eternal argument about "priorities" which always ends up relegating their demands to the background: the violence perpetrated today on a massive scale against families in Algerian villages has a deadened echo in the violence which, for years, has been perpetrated by this Code, which women consider "depraved", and the source of multiple small murders.
This account might shock those who believe that Islamic fundamentalism
appears suddenly, like a monster out of the blue, or as the effect of
foreign influences. It is actually done by the very women who defy death
by demonstrating in the midst of Islamic upsurge, and who have shouted
in all these demonstrations that they have had enough with the Family Code.
Women
are still defying death by gathering signatures for their petition
(they have formed a joint committee constituted by 15 women's groups) which
asks for 22 amendments to the discriminating articles of this Code.
Even though they are all in favour of the abolition of the Family Code, they have decided to propose the most important amendments as a tactical move in a particularly difficult political context.
To their movement, the ruling power responds with disdain: prior to
the spring session of the National Popular Assembly, where the Code must
be discussed, the Ministry of National Solidarity has just proposed a paper
of amendments which hardly includes any of the women's proposals; polygamy
is maintained (article 8), the tutelage which makes them minors for life
(article 11), and the inequality between men and women both in marriage
and divorce (articles 39 and 48). This Code is kept profoundly archaic.
When women are used as impassioned fighters against Islamic fundamentalism,
everything is fine; but when it's the turn to truly fight against it,
giving women equal rights, silence prevails and, even worse, they are the
object of bad treatment.
They are a minority of militants, as they were on the day after the
national
liberation war to reclaim their rights; in 1974 to condemn violence;
in 1984 to protest against the adoption of the Family Code. But the echo
that women find and the great demonstrations which they have been able
to organise show that they are potentially a majority and that they reflect
much more than what is actually said about women's aspirations.
They are hardly supported by the democratic parties, which in Algeria,
as in other countries, consider that women are not a true part of the political
scene; they address themselves to civil society and participate in
this way, with all the possible difficulties and imaginable risks,
in the
creation of an Algerian public opinion, by talking directly to a real
people, that is to say, to diverse and contradictory groups (given that
the abstract people, or "Nation", has hardly ever been favourable to them).
Their struggle is not mediated, in spite of being essential and being situated as much at the heart of the struggle against Islamic fundamentalism as in real democratic prgress.
Algerian women need the support of all democrats worthy of that name.
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