Human rights violations, including torture, and arbitrary detention, have been a long-standing practice in Algeria especially after the peaceful uprising of the Algerian people on February 22, 2019, including as a way to silence and punish peaceful dissenting voices. This has had an intended chilling effect on civil society, human rights defenders, journalists and lawyers.
This report sheds light on the role of ordinance n° 21-08 of June 8, 2021 (Article 87 bis) of the Penal Code, which introduces a new definition of the terrorist act, in perpetrating widespread patterns of human rights violations in Algeria. It further explains the consequences of the use of these anti-terrorist measures (including Ordinance No. 21-08) on civic space and on peaceful activists.
The Algerian authorities are controlling all the security services and are using them to repress peaceful protests, going so far as to use the legal instruments of counter-terrorism at the discretion and its corollary pretrial detention without worrying about respect for human rights.
In order to counter dissident voices, empty the streets of protest and peaceful demonstrations and exclude civil society, the Algerian government has developed a repressive strategy, which consists of criminalizing any non-violent opposition, by introducing an anti-terrorist procedure. The Algerian authorities then established ordinance n° 21-08 of June 8, 2021 (Article 87 bis) of the Penal Code which introduces a new definition of the terrorist act with a broad and imprecise character; taking advantage of the absence of a universally accepted definition of terrorism.
Those targeted by this anti-terrorist legal procedure are the peaceful activists who contest the legitimacy of this power, not terrorism. From the cartoonist to the environmental activist and human rights defenders, including lawyers, no one is safe from prosecution based on the anti-terrorist ordinance (or Ordinance No. 21-08) and find themselves imprisoned, persecuted, under judicial control, forbidden to leave the country and even tortured. Therefore, the Algerian authorities want to take terrorism as an excuse to justify the repression.
In Algeria, the elements that allow civil society to play a full role, namely access to information, participation and dialogue, freedom of expression and the right to assemble to express one’s point of view, and freedom of association, are present on paper but absent on the ground.
This report maps out the Algerian authorities’ systematic use of torture, arbitrary arrests and preventive detentions against peaceful journalists, human rights defenders and prisoners of conscience.
This pattern of violations is exemplified through cases documented by SHOAA for Human Rights, which calls on the Algerian authorities to cancel ordinance No. 21-08 of June 8, 2021, to use the international standards of the definition of terrorism and to specify what is accused, and to stop using the ban on leaving the country without legal proceedings with serious charge.
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