Arabs & Arabian Records Aggregator. Chronicler. Milestones of the 25 Countries of the Arabic Speaking World (official / co-official). AGCC. MENA. Global. Ist's to Top 10's. Records. Read & Enjoy./ www.arabianrecords.org
This remarkable achievement underscores the university’s leadership in scientific research, affirming its pivotal role in Algeria’s innovation landscape and commitment to academic excellence. The recognition of these five esteemed scholars not only highlights their individual contributions but also elevates M’Sila University as a beacon of scientific advancement on the global stage.
Five distinguished professors from Mohamed Boudiaf University in M’Sila have earned recognition in the 2024 Stanford University ranking of the top 2% of scientists worldwide. This prestigious classification highlights their contributions to research and places them among a total of 68 Algerian researchers honored in this global assessment.
M’Sila University stands out as the leading Algerian institution, boasting the highest number of researchers included in this elite ranking. This achievement underscores the university’s commitment to advancing scientific research and fostering academic excellence, positioning it as a vital contributor to Algeria’s development and innovation landscape.
Professor Amar Boudellaa, the university director, emphasized the significance of this accomplishment as a reflection of the institution’s dedication to scientific inquiry. He affirmed the university’s ongoing support for researchers, inventors, and start-up founders, aligning with the vision outlined by the Minister of Higher Education.
The five notable researchers recognized in this ranking are:
Professor Bouarissa Nadir (Natural Sciences/Physics)
Professors Berri Saadi and Maireche Abdelmadjid (Faculty of Sciences)
Professor Chouder Aissa (Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Technology)
Hocini Abdesselam (Electronics, Faculty of Technology)
Since its inception in 1885, Stanford University has published the Top 2% Scientist ranking annually since 2020, based on comprehensive studies conducted by its researchers. This accolade not only celebrates individual achievements but also enhances the reputation of M’Sila University as a hub for scientific advancement in Algeria.
After a revolt in 1871, French colonial authorities in Algeria exiled 2,000 insurgents to New Caledonia. Now their descendants are seeking to reclaim their heritage.
When Christophe Sand landed in Algiers for the first time in 2005 and saw the city’s Casbah surrounded by clouds, he started to cry.
“I felt this pain I’d never felt before, that was unfamiliar to me,” he said. “I wanted to scream.”
Sand grew up 11,000 miles from Algeria in New Caledonia, a French territory in the South Pacific that is, culturally and geographically, worlds away from the North African city of Algiers. For most of his life, Sand’s family history remained a mystery to him. While Sand had been told his great-grandfather was a convict from Algeria, his grandmother refused to speak about him and her Algerian heritage, changing her name from “Yasmina” to “Mina” to create distance between herself and her Arab roots.
“She never embraced her origins,” Sand said, noting that he never fully understood how his family had ended up in New Caledonia.
As he got older, Sand set out to uncover the truth about his Algerian ancestors. What he discovered brought to light a complex colonial history that unveils how far the French colonial state went to protect its empire — and the lasting impact it has had on communities around the world.
In January 1871, 40 years after the French seized control of Algeria, the Kabyle people, a Amazigh ethnic group, banded together to lead what was at the time, the biggest revolt against French occupation in Algerian history.
Kabyle leaders believed it was the opportune moment to strike against French colonial powers. France had just lost a war against Prussia, which had led to the collapse of the French government, and was more vulnerable after its defeat. The revolt spread rapidly, with 250 tribes in the rebels’ ranks.
But the French authorities responded more brutally than expected, destroying entire villages and killing tens of thousands of people, both rebels and civilians. After a year of fighting, the revolt was definitively quashed in 1872. The French authorities seized over 450,000 hectares of land that it distributed to French settlers and quickly put in place trials to prosecute anyone who had rebelled against the French state.
Over 2,000 insurgents, among them leaders of the revolt, faced trial in Constantine where they were presented not as anti-colonial leaders but as petty criminals. Because most of the men hailed from noble families, however, the French were wary of sentencing them to death. Instead, they decided to exile the men to the farthest place imaginable: New Caledonia.
Sand’s great-grandfather was one of these leaders. Along with more than 2,000 other men, he was exiled to New Caledonia in the late 19th century to work in labor camps. The men were sent to Bourail, a place chosen to be a first colony for prisoners. Archives reveal that throughout this journey, the Algerian men continued to resist colonial forces, giving particular importance to their faith: Even during trying passages at sea, they still dutifully observed the fast of Ramadan and continued following certain dietary restrictions, abstaining from the consumption of pork and alcohol.
New Caledonia wasn’t only a place for political prisoners from France’s colonies, the French exiled convicts from the mainland, too. When the men landed on New Caledonia’s shores, they were not allowed to practice Islam, had to adopt Christian names and were forced to marry exiled French women or daughters of French exiles. The colonial administration was hoping that through these marriages, they would create Christian families that conformed to their idea of settlers. The reverse happened: French women took on Algerian traditions and kept alive their heritage, learning how to cook Algerian food and teaching it to following generations. These families cultivated date palm trees as they did back in Algeria. They gave their children Muslim names, in spite of a prohibition to do so by the colonial administration. In 1936, when the ban was lifted, many finally used their Arab names in public.
But for all the traditions that were passed down, many were not. Over time, their languages were forgotten and, critically, so was the history of their ancestors and their rebellion against the French colonial state. Rather than carrying forth the anti-colonial legacies of their ancestors, their descendants became defenders of colonialism in New Caledonia.
At first, many Algerian men had no choice but to help French authorities suppress revolts by the local Kanak — the Indigenous Melanesian inhabitants of New Caledonia — in order to gain back their freedom. But over time, their participation was not simply forced; in some cases it was voluntary. The descendants who were assimilated into French settler society played a key role in the repressive apparatus of the colonial state; it was an Algerian prisoner who killed the Kanak chief Bwëé Noël Pwatiba, an important leader of the 1917 Kanak revolt. Algerian prisoners settled on lands captured by French authorities in the aftermath of Indigenous insurrections. This alliance — both forced and later voluntary — with the French colonial authorities meant that for most of their history in New Caledonia, these descendants were not seen as victims of the same colonial force but instead their helping hand.
Today, 15,000 descendants live in New Caledonia, with the majority residing in the town Nessadio Bourail. Until recently, however, many descendants did not know or share their ancestors’ history.
This was the case for Sand’s grandmother, who believed for most of her life that her grandfather was a criminal. “In New Caledonia, the descendants of these communities had their cultural memories eradicated,” Sand said.
As Sand got older, however, he became more curious about his family’s history. He went as far as traveling to the archives of overseas territories in Aix-en-Provence, France, where he discovered that his great-grandfather was not a criminal but an anti-colonial leader. “My life changed that day, when I realized he was a revolt leader,” Sand said.
At the time, Sand thought the discovery of these archives was the end of his journey to better understand his family’s origins. Then, in the early 2000s, documentary filmmakers came to New Caledonia to interview the descendants of the revolt leaders. They brought a book with them about those exiled from Algeria. In it, Sand found the forgotten story of his great-great-grandmother Tessadit who, upon learning her son would be exiled to New Caledonia, ran down to the port of Algiers to beg a soldier to let her say goodbye one last time. “They gave her 30 seconds,” Sand said. “That’s inhumane.”
When the documentary filmmakers arrived in New Caledonia, elders shared stories passed down to them from their relatives for the first time. “It was a real tipping point for the community,” Sand said, who noted most young people had never heard these stories from elders before. “When the elders got in front of the camera, they let it all come out,” he said. “It was as if they had been carrying knots in their stomachs since childhood that were finally coming out.”
The documentary, Les témoins de la mémoire, was hugely popular when it premiered in 2004, not only with descendants but also with Algerians themselves, who viewed these men as the leaders who put the country on track to eventually achieve independence in 1962.
“We did not know the history, we did not know people were uprooted like that,” said Myriam Moussa, 47, who lives in Algiers. “I had tears in my eyes when I watched the documentary and spoke about it extensively with friends and family.”
Sand, who featured in the film, didn’t realize how popular the documentary was in Algeria until he went to visit in 2005. On the flight over, other passengers recognized Sand and told him: “Welcome, you are at home here.” When he got off the plane, people were waiting for him at the airport to see with their own eyes if their cousin from New Caledonia was coming home.
In Algeria, Sand went to visit his great-grandfather’s village and, for the second time on his trip, began sobbing when the car pulled into the village. People had gathered to meet Sand, many of whom had traveled from afar, to welcome him back home. They offered him dates and goat milk and commented on how, despite the generations of separation, he still bore a resemblance to his relatives.
In the village, Sand visited the small home where his great-grandfather was born and touched the floor where, as per tradition, his umbilical cord was buried. When Sand emerged from the house, onlookers told him: “Son, your face has changed.”
Since the documentary aired, many descendants say the way they view themselves and their identity has changed.
Prior to the film coming out, there was some awareness about the history of North Africans in New Caledonia. The Association of Arabs and Arab Friends, for instance, was created in 1969 in an effort to bring people with shared history together. But like Sand’s grandmother, many descendants spent their lives feeling shame about who they were and what their ancestors represented, facing racism when trying to integrate into the white settler community. The documentary and learning their ancestors’ history changed that.
The Algerian community in New Caledonia, however, is far from homogenous: While some people now embrace their Algerian cultural heritage, others do not, remaining profoundly Caledonian. Many blend their multiple cultures and heritages together. Sand, for instance, continues to identify as Catholic but observes Ramadan.
“We are not a diaspora, the link was too cut for too long for us to be one,” Sand said. But after several years of feeling shame about their heritage, many people are reclaiming it and identifying as Arab. Sand even named his daughter Tessadit, after his great-great-grandmother who forced her way past French soldiers to say goodbye to her son.
Celebrating their ancestors’ anti-colonial struggle is also complicated for many descendants, whose families have actively supported the French colonial state in New Caledonia and the oppression of the local Kanak people.
Sand, who is now dedicated to popularizing this history, hopes that by sharing it more widely and showing that both Algerians and the Kanak were oppressed by the same colonial force, he can help ease tensions between the two communities. Though their histories are different, Sand said, the legacies of French colonialism, dislocation and oppression have similarly afflicted both peoples’ cultures.
In 2013, the Algerian government invited the descendants, including Sand and his mother, to visit Algeria and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the country’s independence, for which their ancestors fought. The delegation from New Caledonia included 30 Algerian descendants as well as 17 Kanaks. “It was the first time we could recognize a shared history and point of view,” Sand said. “We came as a country, not just as descendants.”
President of Algeria, Abdelmadjid Tebboune lays a wreath at the Soldiers’ Monument during a celebration last November marking the anniversary of the outbreak of the liberation revolution against French colonial rule / Algerian Presidency / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Christophe Sand’s great-grandfather / Courtesy of Christophe Sand
An awards ceremony hosted by the King Salman Global Academy for Arabic Language honored the top three teams in the event
Event aims to enhance the dictionary with innovative applications and new ideas
Russian team Spiderweb Network has won first place in the second Arabic Hackathon, scooping a prize of SR150,000 ($39,994) for their innovative idea.
Their project proposed an automatic enrichment system for the “Riyadh Dictionary” using three knowledge sources — the Arabic language expert community, artificial intelligence, and dictionaries found on the web.
An awards ceremony hosted by the King Salman Global Academy for Arabic Language honored the top three teams in the event, which aims to enhance the dictionary with innovative applications and new ideas.
This global technical challenge is aimed at individuals and organizations with technical and linguistic skills from all over the world. Teams develop innovative technical solutions and digital platforms for automatic Arabic language processing to enhance its status among the world’s living languages.
Second place went to the Pioneers of Intelligence, a joint Algerian-French team who received SR100,000. Their project focused on using AI to provide terms and definitions from specialized fields in a fast and effective way, with the possibility of creating specialized lexicons such as the “Riyadh Medical Dictionary.”
The Saudi-Egyptian Arabic Examples team took third place and a prize of SR50,000 with their idea for an AI system that provides appropriate examples for the meaning of each word.
The second edition of the challenge saw a total of 546 participants, 57 percent of whom were female and 43 percent male, representing 30 countries in 142 competing teams.
Abdullah Al-Washmi, Secretary-General of the King Salman Global Academy for Arabic Language, highlighted the establishment’s commitment to promoting the use of the Arabic language and launching supportive initiatives.
The closing ceremony was accompanied by activities such as an exhibition by the Arabic Intelligence Center, which was launched in April and specializes in automated Arabic language processing.
The center includes several initiatives, such as: the “Suwar” platform for digital dictionaries, “Falak” for digital corpora, and the Riyadh Dictionary for Contemporary Arabic Language.
Al-Washmi said the center represented a significant leap in the digital transformation of Arabic language services by developing technologies that aided its use, analysis, understanding, and production.
source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)
__________
The Russian team won first place in the Arabic Hackathon challenge, which concluded in Riyadh on Thursday (June 6). / Russian team Spiderweb Network has won first place in the second Arabic Hackathon, scooping a prize of SR150,000 for their innovative idea. (KSGAFAL)
Who is Kaylia Nemour, the 17-year-old Algerian world champion gymnast?
Kaylia Nemour, the 17-year-old Algerian gymnast, won gold on the women’s uneven bars at the World Cup in Cottbus, Germany, marking a milestone in her career.
Evolving within the Avoine-Beaumont club, the Algerian gymnast has established herself as a promising star in the discipline and aims to maintain her status at the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Nemour’s participation towards the Paris 2024 Olympics was secured on October 2, 2023, when she earned her place at the 2023 World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium, with a silver medal on the uneven bars.
Arriving at the World Cup Final in Germany 2024 as the favorite, Nemour lived up to expectations by scoring 15.433 on the uneven bars, mirroring her qualifying score. Her performance on Saturday not only secured her first place on the podium, but also highlighted her formidable competitiveness on her favorite apparatus.
“Qualifying was particularly successful. One of her best performances ever, a cut above the World or African Championships. She’s matured and grown, which makes the movement even prettier and more pleasing to watch,” explained her coach Marc Chirilcenco to La Nouvelle République.
More competitions to come
In addition to her uneven bars triumph, Nemour is also preparing for upcoming competitions, including the World Cup stops in Baku, Azerbaijan March 7-10, and Doha, Qatar, April 17-20, followed by the African Championships in Marrakech, Morocco April 30-May 7.
Algeria has finally inaugurated Africa’s largest mosque featuring world’s tallest minaret after years of delay.
The mosque with a minariet standing at 265 metres (869 feet) is being inaugurated ahead of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.
Known as Djamaa El Djazair, the mosque reportedly cost close to $900m to build and was constructed by a Chinese firm.
The mosque is the the third largest in the world after the holiest sites in Makkah and Madinah and the largest in Africa.
It is located in the al-Mohammadiya area of Algiers and extends to an area of 200,000 square meters. The area of the prayer halls alone will be about 215,000 square feet.
The Great Mosque will also have a library, a conference center, a house of Quran, a museum and a research center.
Under the patronage of H.H. Dr. Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah, Sharjah Centre for Islamic Economics (SCIE) at the university organised a ceremony to honour the winners of the Al Qasimia University Award for Islamic Economics Research, held in the university theatre, in the presence of the President of the University, members of the Board of Trustees, the University Rector, deans of colleges, and members of the Academic, and administrative bodies and students.
Professor Jamal Salem Al Tarifi, President of Al Qasimia University, honoured the award winners and congratulated them on the quality of research presented in Islamic economics studies.
Professor Dr. Awad Al Khalaf, Acting Chancellor of the University, expressed his highest thanks and gratitude to the Ruler of Sharjah, and founder of the University, for His Highness’s generous patronage of the award, as this sponsorship adds value to one of the most important scientific activities that contribute to the renaissance of the economic sector, and the dissemination of the principles and values of Islamic economics, according to scientific foundations, and qualitative scientific research taking into consideration the real need of building a solid economy that achieves UAE development.
The list of researchers included honouring Dr. Badr Al Zaman Khamqani, from the Republic of Algeria, winner in the field of economics, in his research entitled: “A proposed strategy to accelerate the pace of digital transformation in Islamic banks.” Dr. Ahmed Abdel Rahman Ahmed Al Majali, from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, won in the field of law, in his research entitled: “blockchain technology compatibility with Islamic financial transactions.” Professor Dr. Aisha Muniza, from the Maldives, won in the field of economics, in her research entitled: “Development of a digital Islamic social stock exchange”.
Dr. Yasser Al Hosani, SCIE Director, announced the launch of the fourth edition of the award under the title “Smart Islamic Financial Engineering”.
8 years have passed since the Algerian film “Z,” the only Arab film, received an Oscar award for best foreign film and best montage.
In 1970, American actor Clint Eastwood and Claudia Cardinal, the famous Italian actress, announced Algeria’s win.
It was received by Ahmed Rashdi, on behalf of the production department of the National Organization for Algerian Cinema, which produced the film.
The film “Z”, one of the most prominent political films in the history of international cinema, was a joint French-Algerian production, dealing with the assassination of the politician Gregory Lambrax in 1963, and the uprising of youth and students condemning dictatorship and repression.
The story was an adaptation of a book by Greek novelist Vassilis Vassilikos inspired by the events of the coup which took place in Greece in the mid-sixties as the army took control of power.
It focused on the assassination of the of democratic Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis in 1963, and the uprisings of youth and students angry at his assassination, denouncing dictatorship and repression.
Most of the scenes were filmed in Algeria by director Costa-Gavras in areas similar to the nature of the city of Athens.
French actors including Jean-Louis Trintignant, Yves Montand along with Greek actress Irene Papas, Algerians Hassan Hassani, Sayed Ahmed Akoumi and Alal al-Mohaib were among the actors.
The letter “Z” was chosen as the title of the film, because it represents a symbolic political connotation in the Greek language, meaning “living.”
It was used by political adversaries of the coup in Greece, as they wrote it on the walls of the Greek cities to denounce the politics of repression and the death of Lambrax.
The architect, researcher and associate professor at the university of Science and Technology of Oran “Mohamed Boudiaf” (USTO), Dr. Dalila Senhadji has won the Hypatia International Award at the Biennale of architectural and Urban Restoration in Florence, Italy, for her outstanding academic career, the academician said Saturday.
Throughout history, Algerian women have fought injustice at work, in the home and on the battlefields, yet their contributions are relatively uncelebrated.
Throughout Algeria’s history under French colonialism, women played a vital role in the quest for self-determination, as well as in protecting and developing the country’s culture and traditions.
This was particularly apparent during the War of Independence (1954-1962), when Algerians fought to free the North African country from 132 years of French rule in a battle that would come to represent the epitome of fierce revolutionary resistance.
Driven by the resolve to liberate Algeria at all costs, women took to combat in an expansive range of roles including as paramilitary fighters, transporters, fundraisers, nurses, cooks and communicators.
One of the many tactics often adopted by female agents during the war was to act as communicators between the Algerian soldiers and the population as a whole, in order to raise funds and propagate news about the revolution. Ironically, by taking part in such high-risk operations, Algerian women strategically subverted the colonial stereotype of the tepid and submissive native woman afforded to them by the unsuspecting French army.
On 5 July 1962, the revolution ended in liberation for Algeria. But while one battle ended, others would soon begin for the country’s female population.
Algerian women would continue to actively engage in national politics in the years following independence, fighting patriarchy, misogyny and political alienation by ex-fellow combatants who were dismissive of their seat at the governing table of the new state.
Despite the many obstacles Algerian women have faced, they have remained socially and politically active. This can be seen by the return of women to the political forefront at the launch of the popular movement, known as Hirak, as well as the Revolution of Smiles.
The protests were triggered by former-president Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s announcement on 10 February 2019 that he would seek a fifth term in office. The Hirak succeeded in ousting Bouteflika, but the struggle to bring the structure of the entire regime down continues.
Despite their enormous historical contributions, Algeria’s iconic women remain somehow uncelebrated outside of the Grand Maghreb and the Arab world.
Here are eight revolutionary Algerian women whose defiance of social and gender norms has cemented their place in history.
Lalla Fadhma N’Soumer (1830-1863)
Lalla Fatma N’Soumer is renowned as an icon of female armed militancy (Wikicommons/ean Geiser/pd-us)
Born into a family of religious marabouts in 1830 (during the fall of Algeria to French colonisation) in a town called Soumer in the Kabylie region, Lalla Fadhma N’Soumer is renowned as an icon of female armed militancy and an Islamic religious authority of her time.
Known for her intellect and ferocity, she led the first wave of resistance (1850-1857) against the French after the death of Cherif Boubaghla in a battle on 26 December 1854.
While her enemies called her the Joan of Arc of the Djurdjura mountains for her military campaigns, she was also referred to as “lalla” or “lady” to signify her honour and sanctity.
In her article about Lalla N’Soumer, author Samia Touati recounts that on the day she was captured by the French army, Marshal Jacques Louis Cesar Alexandre Randon (1795- 1871) asked Lalla N’Soumer why her men violently resisted the French troops.
She replied: “God wanted it. It is neither your fault, nor mine. Your soldiers went out of their ranks to penetrate my village. Mine defended themselves. I’m now your captive. I have no reproach to you. You shouldn’t have any reproach to me. It was written this way!”
Zoulikha Oudai (1911-1957)
Zoulikha Oudai is known in Algeria as “mother of martyrs” (Creative commons/memoria)
Born Yamina Echaib in 1911 to an educated family in Hadjout, Zoulikha’s commitment to freedom fighting began as a mediator between the National Liberation Front (FLN) and the Algerian population.
A nationalist party formed in 1954 and which went on to rule Algeria after independence, the FLN initially resisted French colonialism through paramilitary guerrilla warfare.
The secrecy of Algerian independence operations warranted the need for mediators such as Oudai to contact Algerian families individually and confidentially to raise funds for the FLN.
In October 1957, the French army arrested Oudai and tortured her for ten days.
After refusing to divulge secret information, French soldiers pushed her from a helicopter, earning her the title of “mother of martyrs”.
Algerian writer Assia Djebar evokes the figure of Zoulikha Oudai in her 1977 film, La nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua (The Nouba of the Women of Mount Chenoua) and her 2002 novel, La femme sans sepulture (The Woman Without a Tomb).
Djamila Bouhired (1935-present)
Djamila Bouhired was a militant during the war (AFP)
Born in 1935 in the historic neighbourhood of Al-Casbah in Algiers, militant Djamila Bouhired showed signs of political leadership in the early years of her childhood. As a pupil in a French school, Bouhired once rebelliously sang “Algeria is our mother” instead of “France is our mother.”
At the age of 20, Bouhired enthusiastically joined the FLN and later on the Fedayeen (armed militants) to take part in guerrilla warfare against the French colonists.
After she was arrested in 1957, Bouhired was tortured by being beaten, burnt and electrocuted at the Rheims prison where she was incarcerated.
Worldwide, activists marched to demand the release of Bouhired. Renowned Syrian poet NizarQabbani, Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and Egyptian president Gamal AbdelNasser all called for her release.
She was honoured by key personalities in the region: Nasser once received her in Egypt, Qabbani wrote a poem about her, the Lebanese musician Fairuz dedicated a song to her, and Chahine directed the 1958 film, Jamila, the Algerian, about her life. Bouhired was also featured in the 1966 Italian-Algerian production, The Battle of Algiers.
But after independence she was deliberately alienated from the political scene by fellow male FLN combatants. Bouhired decided to fight yet another battle against Bouteflika’s election when she marched alongside young student activists last year.
Exasperated by the injustice of patriarchy, Bouhired asserted women’s role in liberating Algeria by announcing during protests last year: “Our blood is the same as men’s. Our blood is not water. Our blood is blood.”
Louisette Ighilahriz
Louisette Ighilahriz’s memoire released in 2000 ignited a conversation in France on torture (AFP)
Born in 1936, militant and author Louisette Ighilahriz devoted her youth to helping the Algerian revolution by working as a courier to transport the FLN’s documents and weapons.
Ighlahriz documented her incarceration and torment at the hands of the French army in her autobiography, Algerienne. This account not only testifies to women’s active engagement during the Algerian war, but it also highlights the widespread use of torture committed by the French, which was finally acknowledged in 2018.
It was decades before Ighilahriz was finally ready to speak about the horrors she faced. In her book she gives a painful account of the dehumanising treatment, the beating and rape at the hands of French army captain Jean Graziani, while in prison.
In addition to the physical torment, Ighilahriz was forced to live in her own excrement: “My urine leaked through the sheet covering the bed, my excrement mixed with my menstrual blood and formed a stinking crust” which pushed her to the edge of insanity.
This account of torture is similar to other narratives on the experiences of other activists, including the biography, Pour Djamila Bouhired, by Jacques Verges (1957) La question by Henri Alleg (1961) and Djamila Boupacha (1962) by Gisele Halimi. Ighilahriz was, however, the first Algerian woman to speak out about rape in a personal autobiography.
Today, the 83-year-old remains active, talking about the betrayal of the revolution by its own militants after independence and participating in today’s revolution.
Zohra Drif (1934-present)
Born into an upper-class family in 1934, it was retired lawyer and politician Zohra Drif’s education that led her to develop staunch feminist and anti-colonial positions that propelled her active engagement with the FLN.
In her memoir, Inside the Battle of Algiers, Drif recounts the joys of having access to information on resistance while at university:
“We finally had access to the publications of the many parties and associations comprising our national movement: the UDMA’s La Republique Algerienne, the PPA-MTLD’s L’Algerie Libre; and El Bassair, published by the oulema. The press brought us information, opinion pieces, and analyses from various perspectives, while lectures by the very individuals engaged in the early struggle gave us the means to separate the wheat from the chaff.”
After independence, Drif continued her political engagement both as a lawyer and as a member of the Algerian Council of the Nation. Her autobiography Memoirs of a combattant of the ALN: Autonomous zone of Algiers is a testimony of her struggle during the Algerian revolution. Her feminist activism continued after independence as a critic of some of the government’s policies.
When a new Islamic family code was proposed in 1981 that would ultimately limit women’s rights within the household, Drif joined fellow feminists as they swarmed the streets of Algiers calling it “the infamy code”.
Drif also joined the masses that marched against former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s bid for a fifth term in Algeria last year, calling for the president’s resignation and opposing having a military state.
Salima Ghezali (1958-present)
Salima Ghezali fought against fundamentalism during the 1990’s civil war in Algeria (Creative Commons/Claude TRUONG-NGOC)
A founding member of the group Women in Europe and the Maghreb and president of the Association for the Advancement of Women, in Algiers, Salima Ghezali is known for her active role in fighting against fundamentalism during the 1990s civil war in Algeria.
The rise of Islamist patriarchy in Algeria was demarcated, on the political scene, by the proposition of a new family code in 1981 which designated the male patriarch as the head of each family, thus giving him authority over women.
Working as the editor of Algerian French-language weekly La Nation put Ghezali’s life in great danger because of her unyielding political opposition to the government of ex-president Chadli Bendjedid and the Islamist party (FIS). Her dissent against censorship infuriated both the Islamists and government officials.
Ghezali’s bravery as a journalist and a feminist was acknowledged worldwide; she received accolades from the World Press Review and the European parliament.
Nour El houda Dahmani and Nour El houda Oggadi
Today’s revolution is built on the back of the struggles of the past. The young students Nour El houda Dahmani and Nour El houda Oggadi are two women who joined the anti-corruption marches last year to demand long-overdue democratic reforms and a political system representative of its young population.
Law student and activist Nour El Houda Dahmani, 22, was arrested in September 2019 while marching in the Hirak student-led protests against the militarily imposed presidential elections.
Dhamani, who was holding a poster at the time of her arrest, reading: “All of the corrupt shall be held accountable”, soon became one of the many iconic faces of the Revolution of Smiles.
Although Dahmani stated that she was not mistreated in prison, the experience of incarceration was traumatic. She was supported by vast numbers of people, as she explained in an interview with Berbere Television: “When I read the articles written about me, and I heard that people marching in the Hirak were asking for my release, even my incarceration did not seem cruelly bad anymore.”
Upon her release, Dhamani only had one goal: to return to university despite missing an entire term.
xxxx
Like Dhamani, Nour El houda Oggadi is a student and activist who was arrested a couple of months later, on 19 December. She was charged with “demoralising the army” because of her social media posts and signs she carried while marching, which were part of demands calling for Algeria to function as a civilian, not a military state. Oggadi served 45 days in prison.
Prison did not deter Oggadi; after her release, she stated her pride in her role in this Hirak, which she describes as “the birth of a new generation.”
The two students became powerful symbols of female resistance in Algeria, just two in a long line of women fighting tyranny and injustice.
PM chairs opening ceremony of 15th Arab Sports Games.
On behalf of the President of the Republic, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, the Prime Minister, Aimene Benabderrahmane chaired the opening of the 15th Arab Sports Games organized by Algeria from on 5-15 July at Mohamed-Boudiaf Olympic Complex in Algiers, with the participation of nearly 2,000 athletes representing 22 Arab countries.
The opening ceremony of the 15th Arab Sports Games hosted by Algeria (July 5-15) started Wednesday in the Mohamed Boudiaf Olympic Complex in Algiers, in the presence of Prime Minister Aymen Benabderrahmane, members of government and guests from various countries and organizations.
