Human Rights Watch: “Bouteflika’s Departure Is A First Step That Needs More Other Reforms”
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika resignation provides an important opportunity for Algeria to dismantle its repressive laws and enshrine public freedoms in legislation and practice, and it is the first time since the uprising of 2011 that street protests have forced a leader in the Arab world to resign, Human Rights Watch said in its latest report.
Sarah Leah Whitson, the Executive Director, MENA Division at the Human Rights Watch said; “Bouteflika’s departure is at most a first step in ending autocratic rule. The next steps should be to release prisoners held for peaceful expression or assembly and to revise the laws used to put them behind bars.”
Human Rights Watch explained that during any transitional phase, authorities should fully respect the rights of Algerians to speak, assemble, and associate with one another.
“The authorities should, at the earliest appropriate moment, plan to overhaul those provisions of the penal code and the laws on association and assembly that stifle rights”.
“The authorities have relied on these laws to silence critics, the crackdown on protests, and weaken independent organizations. Existing law also gives the executive branch an undue measure of control over the judiciary, which lacks the independence necessary to make it a true guarantor of rights and freedoms”.
“Algerian authorities should eliminate all provisions of the criminal and press codes that criminalize nonviolent speech, such as for “insulting the president,” and “defaming state institutions.” They should rescind the effective ban on all demonstrations in Algiers that was in effect before the current wave of protests and lift all unreasonable obstacles in law and practice to peaceful gatherings, including by changing the requirement of prior authorization to one of notification. They should end the practice of arbitrarily arresting peaceful demonstrators”, HRW said.
The organization asserted that; “The authorities should also revamp the law on associations, which effectively allows authorities to withhold legal recognition arbitrarily from associations that displease them”.
“As Algeria finds itself at a crossroads, reform will be genuine only if it involves dismantling the repressive legal machinery that the authorities have used for years to repress dissenting voices”.
With regard to freedom of expression, the organization said: “Algeria’s laws governing freedom of expression, access to information, and audiovisual production fall short of the international standards”.
“The information code, adopted on January 12, 2012, contains several articles that constrain freedom of expression and of the press. Article 2 states that news journalism is to be “a freely practiced activity” but that it must conform to broad concepts such as “national identity, the cultural values of society, national sovereignty and national unity, as well as the requirements of national security, national defense, public order, and the country’s economic interests, among others”.
“The penal code is also rife with articles criminalizing free speech, such as articles 144 on insulting a public official, article 144bis on “defaming the president,” and article 146 on “insulting and defaming state institutions”.
“The Algerian authorities have used criminal prosecutions as a means of silencing critics”.
In the original version of the report, it is clear that the organization adopts an unfair assessment, according to the UN indicators, of the reality of freedoms in general. It refuses to recognize the cultural, religious and social specificities, considering that restricting practices in Algeria are subject to legal restrictions,
within the scope of public morals or the protection of national identity and even public order, from the restrictions that must be lifted from citizens.
