by ROBERT FISK
“Families whose relatives vanished during the civil war demand to know what happened to their loved ones during a recent demonstation in Algiers.” AFP/Getty Images
They are all over the wall of Naseera Dutour’s office, in their hundreds, in their thousands. There are cemeteries of them, bearded, clean shaven, the youth and the elderly of Algeria, veiled women, a smiling girl with a ribbon in her hair, in colour for the most part; the bloodbath of the 1990s was a post-technicolor age so the blood came bright red and soaked right through the great revolution that finally conquered French colonial power.
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No talk at Algeria’s anti-colonialism conference of the 6,000 men and women who died under torture at the hands of the Algerian police and army and hooded security men in the 1990s. For across at Sidi Fredj – yes, just up the coast where the French landed in 1830 – le pouvoir was parading a clutch of ancient ex-presidents from the mystical lands of the anti-colonial struggle, to remind us of Algeria’s primary role in the battle against world imperialism. There was old Ahmed Ben Bella – more white-haired skeleton than Algeria’s first leader, coup-ed out of power in 1965 (although they didn’t mention that). There was poor old Dr Kenneth Kaunda, who mercilessly tried to sing a song under the wondrous eyes of Thabo Mbeki. And then there were the Vietnamese whose victory at Dien Bien Phu taught the FLN (National Liberation Front) that they could beat the French here, which they did in 1962 at a cost of, say, one and a half million “martyrs”.
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