Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Hassina Mechaï
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Algerian artist ‘Baya was a secret I didn’t want to force’, says author Alice Kaplan
Paris, 21 November 1947, the young Baya Mahieddine exhibited her paintings in Paris. In front of Aime Maeght’s gallery. Painters Braque and Andre Marchand, writers Albert Camus, Andre Breton and Francois Mauriac, came to observe the brightly pigmented paintings of a 16-year-old Algerian girl. Alice Kaplan’s writing, which traces...
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‘Modern day heroes are risking their lives to cross seas in search of safety’
In his 2019 novel On the Greenwich Line, Shady Lewis gave us a book that is deeply hopeless and at the same time perfectly funny and cheerful. It’s a paradox that the Egyptian writer handles with apparent ease. And it is brilliant. It has now been translated into French...
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Towards a French Kulturkampf; what’s happening in France?
What’s happening in France? It’s a reasonable question that worries even international authorities, the UN included, not least because independent UN human rights experts have declared that a controversial French bill on global security is incompatible with international human rights law. Meanwhile, images of police brutality have raised a...
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‘The future lies in taking the Palestinian question in front of the courts’
The news came through on 20 December last year that International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda had announced that, “After a thorough, independent and objective preliminary examination of all reliable information in the possession of her Office, the Office has concluded that all the criteria set out in...
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Mathieu Rigouste, December 1960 in Algeria: One Hero, the People
December 1960. In most of Algeria’s largest cities, a vast uprising of the “natives” shook the French colonial power. This revolutionary impulse turned the “Algerian people” into a decisive political entity. Mathieu Rigouste has explained how in a powerful documentary, Un Seul Héros le Peuple (One hero, the people),...
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This book tackles the silence of French conscripts and asks: What did you do in Algeria, Daddy?
What did you do in Algeria, Daddy? is the title of a new book by historian Raphaëlle Branche, and the essence of the question runs throughout the text. She is a specialist in colonial violence, and interviewed French conscripts and their relatives in order to retrace, from a personal...
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Remembering the Bentalha Massacre
Where: The town of Bentalha, about 15 kilometres south of Algiers, Algeria When: During the night of 22-23 September 1997 What happened It took one night to massacre more than 400 people. Though official sources claim only 100 people were killed. On 22 September 1997, as night fell, between...
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Who is Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, the oldest political prisoner in Europe?
On 25 October, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah will begin his 37th year as a prisoner. This communist activist and resistance hero of the Palestinian cause has been imprisoned in Lannemezan, France, since 1984. Technically, he could have been released at any time since 1999. Who is Abdallah, whose name haunted...
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Celebrating Palestine in Paris is what Ardi is all about
I’m in the north of Paris, in an area where residential buildings are increasingly common. Along a peaceful street, there it is: Ardi, the Arabic for “my land”. The long-thought-of project put together by Rania Talala is finally here. Ardi sounds like hardi, “bold” in French, and boldness was...
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Egypt Writer Alaa Al-Aswany’s work as a perpetual ‘opponent’ highlights aspects of dictatorship
Alaa Al-Aswany is probably the most famous living Egyptian writer in the world. Since the success of The Yacoubian Building in 2006, which told us about the life of people in Cairo and the various afflictions of Egyptian society, Al-Aswany has divided his work between dense novels about his...
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Idir, the Berber poet is gone
Algerian singer Idir died in Paris on Saturday night at the age of 70. He was a leading figure of Algerian music and with him the memory of Algerian immigration in France has died. His fellow countryman Zinedine Zidane called him “Monsieur Idir”. Idir embodied both strength and tranquillity;...
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Yassin Adnan takes us inside Morocco in the age of the internet
Hot Maroc is the first novel by Moroccan journalist, poet and short story writer Yassin Adnan. It immerses the reader in today’s Morocco, between the real world and the internet fantasy. Hot Maroc is a cynical satire about the eternal human and social comedy, and has been selected for...
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Major sporting events in Saudi Arabia ‘sportwash’ the dire human rights situation
The Paris-Dakar Rally, inaugurated in 1978 and now known as The Dakar Rally, or simply The Dakar, was originally staged from Paris to Senegal in West Africa. After being held for 10 years in South America due to security concerns, the 2020 event is taking place in the Kingdom...
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Another way of talking about Gaza
Iyad Alasttal is a Palestinian film director. Born in Khan Younis, he has directed award-winning documentaries about the Gaza Strip which have won prizes at several film festivals in Egypt, France, Lebanon, Britain, Italy, Tunisia and Palestine. He also works as a translator for French delegations and journalists in...
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Redouane Boudjemaa: ‘The Algerian hirak is a rebirth of the Algerian nation’
The people of Algeria have been protesting for more than six months — every Friday since 22 February, at least — with the demand that “they all leave”. For the people, “they” refers to the establishment, the government, the gang of corrupt politicians in power; those whom Algerians accuse...
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‘The universality of human rights is a Jewish principle, which Israel violates every day.’
B’Tselem is one of the most controversial and exposed NGOs in Israel. It was founded in 1989, in the middle of the first Palestinian Intifada, with the mission of documenting human rights violations in the Israeli-occupied territories and creating a human rights culture in the state. In telling the...
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Israel journalist: ‘The deal of the century is the joke of century’
The voice is clear, a slight Hebrew accent can be detected when Gideon Levy speaks English. He is precise and concise, showing off maybe some “chutzpah”, but his way of saying things is direct. Does this make Gideon Levy annoying? Certainly not. On the contrary, kindly and patiently he...
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‘Establishing a connection between Israeli politics and French Jews is very dangerous’
Emmanuel Macron’s statement on 20 February was a surprise. Speaking at the annual dinner of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), the French President said that, “Anti-Zionism is one of the modern forms of anti-Semitism.” According to historian Dominique Vidal, that statement was a political error....
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The Algerian regime is ‘politically dead’ so there is cause for optimism
Algeria has been experiencing continuous popular protests against a possible fifth term in office for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika since 22 February. On Monday, he finally renounced the idea of running at the next election, but he also postponed sine die the presidential election scheduled for 18 April. He is...
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The PA wants to give Hamas’ weapons to Israel
He is nicknamed the “surgeon of Gaza”. It was in 2001 that Dr Christophe Oberlin began to travel to Gaza regularly. He operates on disabled people and patients with war wounds and also teaches Palestinian surgeons microsurgery and reconstructive surgery. He was against the support given by French President...
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Alaa Al-Aswany: ‘I write because I don’t agree’
Since The Yacoubian Building was released in 2002 Alaa Al-Aswany has become Egypt’s most emblematic writer. Sometimes compared to Naguib Mahfouz the author has recently released a new novel, “I ran to the Nile,” published by Actes Sud, Paris. How does one tell the story of the revolution? How...
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Niger’s President makes himself indispensable to the Sahel region
Is Africa becoming the new deployment ground of Western forces? The question first arises with regard to the French presence through the Barkhane force in Mali. Other bases or battalions scattered are Djibouti, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Gabon, or in Central African Republic (CAR) where the Sangaris force lasted...
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‘I became an invader in my own land’ — a Palestinian Bedouin’s struggle
Aziz Al-Turi endeavours to be as accurate as he can when he explains the situation of his village, Al-Araqeeb, and the narrative that the Israeli authorities are forcing onto the Bedouins and the Negev Desert. The French Jewish Union for Peace invited Al-Turi to a conference in Paris about...
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French-Algerian activist Houria Bouteldja: ‘The left is struggling in France’
Houria Bouteldja is the spokesperson and a founding member of Le Parti des Indigènes de la République, The Indigenous of the Republic, or PIR. PIR started off as a political movement whose goal was to give a voice to immigrants’ children who Bouteldja calls “the indigenous”. She is the...