Like every year in North Africa, the New Year takes place on a date which corresponds to January 12 of the Gregorian calendar. The year 2022 corresponds to the year 2972 of the Berber calendar (Amazigh calendar).

Unfortunately, this year will be celebrated in the sadness that Kabylia has just relived after a bloody period of dictator Houari Boumedienne who murdered hundreds of Kabyles in indifference since his seizure of power by a military putsch carried out in 1965, until his death in 1978 in Algeria.

A wave of arbitrary arrests of peaceful activists has accelerated further since the change in appearance of the corrupt regime through the fraudulent presidential elections of December 12, 2019 in Algeria, which Kabylia has always refused, since then a series of arrests and committal warrants has multiplied. The military junta in power has decided to suppress any demonstration calling for their release, an unprecedented manhunt against the main Kabylian militants is taking place in several localities, in particular Tizi Ouzou, Bejaia and Kherrata.

The Algerian leaders must put an end to the repression and proceed to the immediate release of all political and opinion prisoners, incarcerated by a magistracy on pay of the military junta. Given the situation, these detentions remain arbitrary insofar as they target people whose only fault is to have peacefully claimed a rule of law guaranteeing individual and collective freedoms while respecting human rights.

In Algeria, the repression of any democratic claim and respect for human rights goes through the stigmatization of Kabylia. Not a day goes by without there being an arrest or a summons targeting an individual or an organization. Often in violation of applicable laws through false accusations. However, none of the targeted actors is responsible or committed an act of violence.

This unprecedented campaign of arrests of academics, intellectuals and other political activists has reached proportions which no longer leave any doubt, it seems of the famous “Operation Zero Kabyles” which is far from being the result of “the imaginary”. A situation that has generated a deep feeling of anguish and injustice to the point that citizens feel threatened in their freedom and be the object of arrests.