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Aouicha Bekhti is a lawyer in Algiers and a strong figure in the movement for the defence of freedoms and citizen’s rights. She is also known among Algerian Internet activists for her very special feminist rants.
As a founding member who created, alongside other female and male comrades the “network against repression and for democratic freedoms and the liberation of detainees,” on the eve of the popular revolt embodied by the Hirak movement, Bekhti was already travelling across the country to assist the first prisoners of conscience.
She was herself arrested during a protest in 2019. Without mincing her words, she is on all fronts against repression, obscurantism and arbitrariness of the Algerian government. No wonder she is the lawyer of activists condemned for their involvement in grassroots movements.
Aouicha Bekhti knows feminist classics very well. She immediately quotes Olympe de Gouges, “If women have the rights to go up to the gallows, they must have the right to step up to the podium.” Well, Algerian women have seized the podiums and took to the streets. Considered as second-class citizens by the Family code, they are however as eligible for arrest as much as men.
This recognition of “equality” has defeated many of them, including a sixty-year old woman suffering from cancer who was arrested for a crime of opinion.
The first wave of arrests of activists has shocked the Algerian opinion which previously took for granted the fact “that an honest and honorable woman had nothing to do with prison.”
A local politician from an opposition party, the 26 year-old Samira Messoussi was the first protester to be imprisoned. She had distinguished herself because she had refused to be released. “Either we are all arrested or we are all released. It is out of the question that I am released because I am a woman,” she stated to the investigating judge, recalls her lawyer Bekhti.
“Samira had also refused to wear the veil that is imposed on women in Algerian prisons,” Bekhti tell us. “Samira asked me [Bekhti] if she had the right to refuse and I assured her that it is a practice not a law. The internal prison regulations can only be in accordance with the law, but no Algerian law imposes the veil on women. They still insisted. So she replied: “in that case give me a Kabyle dress”. In court, she showed up with her hair loose, she was beautiful.”
Samira’s resistance encouraged other women to refuse to wear the veil. Aouicha Bekhti had also represented Amina Dahmani, a young student arrested in the street and detained in the same room as Samira who “encouraged her”. Samira’s lawyer explains: “Samira was already an activist from Algiers before the Hirak and had the experience of political struggle. To her mother who was worried about seeing her in prison, she replied, but it was you who taught me to fight.”
" Either we are all arrested or we are all released. It is out of the question that I am released because I am a woman "
Amina comes from a working-class neighbourhood and her family feared for her reputation. Faced with an immense outpouring of solidarity and significant media coverage, fear was transmuted into pride. It is true that an old Algerian saying -probably inherited from the history of resistance to various occupiers- considers that “prison is made for men, the ‘real’ ones”, but once again, the Hirak allowed Algerian women to demonstrate their civic commitment for freedoms right from their cells. This is what feminists have continued to proclaim at each demonstration since February 2019.
Their slogans and banners recall that they are the heirs of the martyr heroines of the war for the liberation of the country and the struggle against Islamist terrorism of the 1980s. Encouraged by the popular Hirak movement to which they have undoubtedly given a peaceful dimension, women tried to introduce their own claims. But often in vain.
Fatima Bouchenaf and some comrades were arrested in Oran (west of the country) during a demonstration they had organised to denounce the killing of Chaima, a 19-year-old girl who was raped and murdered. Fatima tells us how their trial had taken grotesque dimensions. They were charged for “non-compliance with sanitary measures” in accordance with a law adopted hastily immediately after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The demonstration was held in the morning outside curfew and there was no ground for conviction with a suspended fine. Nevertheless, Fatima and her friends have appealed “on a symbolic basis to contest this trial” explains Aouicha Bekhti. Algerian justice can be very creative in finding grounds for arraignment.
Lawyer Bekhti highlights the fact that “first of all, there is no prisoner of conscience status in the Penal Code so everyone is housed in the same boat in prison.”
“In other words, prison overcrowding is entirely affected by the lack, or even the absence of healthcare: “the prisoners clean the cells and the common spaces themselves and this explains why the women’s quarters are cleaner,” jokes Aouicha.
The lawyer adds that “Nevertheless, Hirak prisoners enjoy a kind of moral status and some guards, and even magistrates, are fairer with them than with ordinary prisoners…” But some activists have experienced sexual assaults by the security forces, revealed by two youngsters.
Also defended by Bekhti, Amira Bouraoui has been particularly mistreated by the courts. This 44-year-old gynaecologist, mother of two, was found guilty on six counts. Already in 2014, she denounced the fourth term of the ousted President Bouteflika. Her legal harassment continues even after serving a prison sentence last year.
Under judicial control since last October, Amina Bourauoi is being prosecuted for, among other things, “inciting unarmed gathering”, “offending or denigrating the dogma or precepts of Islam”, “insulting the President of the Republic by an outrageous, insulting or defamatory expression”, “publication which would harm national unity”, “false or slanderous information or news likely to endanger security or public order”, “inciting to deliberate and manifest violation of an obligation of prudence or safety decreed by law or regulation, directly exposing the life of others or their physical integrity to danger”.
Her supposed offense against Islam has led to insults and threats against her on social media and many consider that she “goes too far” in her comments. However, Amira does not seem to be the kind of person to be silenced.
Dalila Touat, a teacher from Mostaganem is a trade unionist. The judicial machine has been set against her for her opposition to the re-election of ex-President Bouteflika. She obviously joined the Hirak. Sentenced to 18 months of arrest, she was released with all the other activists by President Tebboune in February. This “gesture of appeasement” by the Algerian authorities is in reality aimed to pass the early legislative elections.
One might think that the tribute paid by Algerian women to freedom has earned them more rights and recognition. It is far from being their reality: “they had extraordinary support when they were in prison but this will not change mentalities”, states Aouicha Bekhti who recalls how “on 8 March of this year, feminists were jostled, insulted, including by women led by Islamists,”
Perhaps Olympe de Gouges could have said that “it is not because you go up to the gallows that you have the right to step up to the podium.”
