Algiers | Wednesday
PRESIDENT Abdelaziz Bouteflika has announced that the Berber language would become an official language in Algeria alongside Arabic after leaders of the large Berber minority called for a boycott of the May general election.
”I have decided in total freedom and with total conviction to include Tamazight (one of the main dialects of the Berber language) in the constitution as a national language with the sole intention of serving the country and its national interest,” Bouteflika said in a speech to the nation.
The Berber language is spoken by up to 20-million Berbers across Northern and sub-Saharan Africa. Berbers ruled across the area before being conquered by Arabs in the seventh century. At present Arabic is the only official language in Algeria.
Bouteflika’s announcement came three days after leaders of the country’s Berber minority, which makes up about one fifth of Algeria’s population of 31-million, called for a boycott of the May parliamentary elections.
The ”aarchs” the ancient Berber tribal and village councils said the government had not met their key demands, which included official recognition of the Berber language and culture and improved living conditions in the Berber-populated region of Kabylie in eastern Algeria.
Three months of riots last year by Berbers protesting at police brutality and discrimination left 60 people dead and 2 000 injured, according to official figures.
The aarchs, who assumed a key role in the protests, say 107 people died and 6 000 were injured.
Last June they drew up a 15-point list of demands to the government for improving living conditions in the poor and mountainous Kabylie region, known as the ”El-Kseur Platform”.
Bouteflika said members of the paramilitary police would be punished when they ”made abusive use of their weapons” but said it was ”unreasonable” to pull them out of Kabylie, as the aarchs have demanded.
”The national gendarmerie is an institution of the republic which is deployed to perform the same job across the whole of the national territory. It would be inconceivable to demand the dismantlement of the gendarmerie in Kabylie while the country continues to fight terrorist barbarity,” he added.
He said 24 gendarmes, including five officers, were being investigate on charges of homicide and the use of firearms. – Sapa-AFP