Paraphrasing, the Algerian Abdelouahab Fersaoui president of the association Rassemblement Actions Jeunesse (RAJ), now dissolved (October 2021) by the senile regime of Algiers, we can say, without being mistaken that since the advent in Algeria of the president with an unpronounceable name, ” it’s a bad time for the freedom of the press not to say all the democratic freedoms in Algeria “.
A slogan to say that the fate of the press is an excellent indicator of the existence or absence of the rule of law. Algeria by force of circumstances and the arrests of its journalists, practically on a daily basis, aligns itself with the effect of absence, that goes without saying.
It is that the freedom of the press is confronted with many red lines. When they are not exercised by the Presidency of the Republic, political parties, security services and local or religious authorities, they are financial through the spectrum of public advertising that the regime agitates to make all recalcitrants bend. .
In this regard, El Watan never ceases to suffer the ordeal and we know instinctively what the independence of the editorial line is worth when financial independence does not follow. It is pure and simple alignment for a cause that one is supposed to fight. It’s a price of freedom in a way. In Algeria, the independent media, when there are any left, are under pressure from the regime and willingly eat out of its hand.
Those who fought in the resistance know things for having been weaned from public funds and the last bastions in this area, Radio M and Maghreb Emergent, have been permanently muzzled. In this regard, the anecdote of their director Ihsane El-Kadi. He was brought handcuffed, from the headquarters of the two media, to the famous barracks, Saturday evening, December 24, in the center of Algiers, by agents of the Algerian General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI).
El-Kadi, despite his name, was sentenced on appeal on Sunday to a six-month prison sentence by the Algiers court, which thus confirmed a verdict pronounced at first instance by the Sidi M’Hamed court. But rest assured, that was for before, he was paying there, for another matter. And pending cases “before his judges”, the guy will not fail along the way, before arriving to appear after his arrest on the night of Friday to Saturday. Of course, no indication has been given officially as to this new arrest. It is to lose oneself in conjectures!
Moreover, in the jargon of the largely caporalized Algerian press, they are banned words as soon as they are used internally and not against the famous enemy from the outside, such as corruption, repression or demonstrations… This may be worth to refractory journalists, the worst miseries on the part of power too, we abstain.
The least we can do is stick these “traitors of the nation” with the pretty motifs of ” publication of false information” Where “undermining national unity » lesser of the reasons which is worth what it is worth, like a long period to savor the chaff of the jails of which Algeria hardly misses.
We don’t tell you, the media landscape in Algeria has never been so shaken, especially since it is bathed in a very tense political climate, media silenced, journalists regularly imprisoned or prosecuted, websites blocked and it’s a minimum for the media setting East of Eden.
It seems that the Algerian authorities have decided to put an end to everything that could seem like an anomaly, this independent, autonomous media in a media landscape under the control of an iron fist.
In this Algeria, the press, which caresses at best in the direction of the hair, benefits greatly from the advertising manna and this, without a visionary spirit to reinvest its financial contributions in its development, hence a crisis of freedom to remain in the most dependent absolute.
Algeria, it should be remembered, ranks 134th for freedom of the press out of 180 countries according to the annual ranking of “Reporters Without Borders”.