441-01192 (Foreign affairs)

Whereas:

• Since December 2019, there has been a crackdown on Algerian citizens, specifically Kabyles, who have been arbitrarily arrested for publicly expressing their political opinions;

• To date, human rights organizations have identified no fewer than five hundred people unjustly imprisoned in Algeria on the basis of false allegations and membership in a terrorist organization since the pacifist Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia was wrongfully declared as such by the current Algerian government;

• Among these prisoners of conscience is Kamira Nait Sid, co-president of an international NGO, the World Amazigh Congress, who in 2016 hosted a conference with the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal and came to the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa;

• These arbitrary arrests are in violation of international human rights law; and

• Militias belonging to the Algerian political police, the DRS, as well as security agents in the national army, have even dared to terrorize Kabyle villagers in the middle of the night, including children and even the elderly.

We, the undersigned, citizens of Canada, call upon the Government of Canada to condemn this arbitrary situation created in Algeria by the country’s government as well as the arrests and convictions, all of them arbitrary, of these hundreds of prisoners of conscience, particularly Kabyle, who are unjustly languishing in prison.