“The first Algerian writer to criticize Khomeini: Anouar Benmalek” (James D. Le Sueur, Fernwood Publishing , 2010)

Quelques extraits d’interviews d’Anouar Benmalek dans le livre : « Between terror and democracy : Algeria since 1989 » de James D. Le Sueur (Fernwood Publishing , 2010)

Sur les événements de 1988 en Algérie :

But few did so naïvely: it was understood that Algerian society could not be transformed without the government’s willingness to respect human rights. As Anouar Benmalek, a journalist writing for the Algiers newspaper Algérie-Actualité, put it in an open letter to President Chadli on November 3, 1989: « To live as a republic requires at the minimum a contract of confidence between the state and citizens. Torture is an extreme rupture of this contract. Know that one can be tortured for thinking differently; know that those responsible for this torture will continue to carry out their business, either at the old jobs or at new ones. This is what keeps all of us hostages in the grip of barbarism. »

Sur les appels au meurtre contre un écrivain :

Truth to tell, despite the international support of Rushdie by other writers, very few writers within Algeria took issue with Khomeini’s fatwa.5 No doubt Algerian writers were consumed with their own internal challenges in 1989, but nevertheless the absence of a general protest was somewhat peculiar. In this context, one person stood out as perhaps the first Algerian writer to criticize Khomeini: Anouar Benmalek, a professor of mathematics at the University of Algiers and a writer. For Benmalek the Khomeini fatwa was not only theologically misguided, but, even worse, it trivialized far more pressing concerns within the Arab world in 1989, such as poverty and oppression. For this reason, Benmalek asked sarcastically if Khomeini was really serious. How could it be that against the backdrop of “great tragedies that have been known or are known today in the Muslim world, underdevelopment, illiteracy, oppression, dictatorships, famine, that all of this is nothing compared to this book: The Satanic Verses!?”

Sur la censure et l’autocensure : 

Thus violence transformed cultural debates, but not always in the ways that its perpetrators hoped. Why? I asked Anouar Benmalek, who went into exile in 1994, this very question when I interviewed him in Paris. Benmalek’s response is crucial to understanding how violence boomeranged to become a creative cultural force in Algeria:

« The big problem for a society like Algeria’s between 1988 and 1989 was self-censorship, self-censorship that was obviously cultivated by organs of repression – the army, the SM [military security], the police and so forth. This self-censorship was extremely powerful. And, paradoxically, I would say that the violence [of the 1990s], because it was limitless, in fact liberated people and writing. Why? Because people discovered that no matter what one did – one could write or not write, write with extreme caution, or throw caution to the wind – either way, they got killed. There’s a poem about this by Tahar Djaout that I like a lot. It says this: “If you speak, they will kill you. If you do not speak, they will kill you. Therefore, speak and die.” And that’s true, because in the newspaper where I was, they killed Tahar Djaout, but they [radical Islamists] also killed the newspaper’s accountant. Why? Because he worked for the newspaper. That is to say that one can be killed for reasons that are completely ridiculous. So people said to themselves, “Die just to die? Enough! We’ve got to write what we really think.” People who had been extremely frightened no longer had any fear, because the price was the same. When they chop off your head – whether it be for some tiny little thing or for something important – it’s the same thing. Paradoxically, we owe this liberty to terrorism. But a lot of people were forced to leave; a lot were forced into exile and to leave behind that which was the dearest in the world to them. As for me, I never imagined I would someday end up in France and be laid to rest in France. Never! That was never part of the plan. I was very content living in Algeria. I had a job at the university. I was involved in the newspaper. I wrote about what I wanted, more or less. Then terrorism changed my way of life. It made me say, “So now what are you going to do? What are you going to do with yourself?” And it’s at that moment when you say, “They killed my friends, and now there remains only one thing left for me – to truly say what I think.” And in the Arab world, that is revolutionary. »

However, the fact is that revolutionary potential signaled by the end of self-censorship, as Benmalek would acknowledge, has never been fully realized.

Sur l’amnésie politique en Algérie :

In a 2007 Paris interview, the exiled Algerian writer Anouar Benmalek offered a slightly different reading of amnesty in Algeria, but agreed that Algeria has sadly chosen amnesia over remembrance. Benmalek, like many Algerians I have spoken with, expressed frustration with what he called the “recurring theme” of amnesty in Algeria. He pointed out that after the riots of 1988, the Algerian state granted amnesty for those involved in the attacks on civilians. In Benmalek’s words: “At each bloody confrontation there is an amnesty, and a culture of amnesia is interwoven in Algerian history. There are no lessons in Algeria. History offers no lessons, and each time it gets worse.”This lack of accountability has made things worse, not better in Algeria. As he pointed out, the situation went from the routine use of “torture” in 1988 (against Islamists), to “mass killings” later on “without any repercussions” and without ever bringing those guilty of heinous crimes to trial.