Encouraged by the debate on memory opened by the Stora report, nine historians call on President Tebboune to put an end to “bureaucratic obstacles”.
The revolt is brewing among Algerian historians . Nine of them, led by Mohamed El Korso, Daho Djerbal and Amar Mohand-Amer, published, Thursday, March 25, an open letter to the head of state, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, asking him to put an end to the “obstacles”. bureaucratic ” penalizing access to the National Archives.
Collateral effect of the publication in January in Paris of Benjamin Stora’s report on Franco-Algerian memorial reconciliation, such a collective initiative is unprecedented. It illustrates the growing frustration of researchers with regard to the management, considered opaque and arbitrary, of the management of the National Archives.
His irremovable boss, Abdelmadjid Chikhi, in office for nineteen years, was supposed to serve as an interlocutor for Mr. Stora in the memorial dialogue that the French President, Emmanuel Macron, and his Algerian counterpart are trying to sketch out. But facing Mr. Stora, Mr. Chikhi did not engage in a comparable work of inventory and proposals on the memory issue. “ Where is the Algerian report ?, asks Amar Mohand-Amer. On the one hand, there is a report [Stora] which creates the debate after its publication and on the other a report [expected from Mr. Chikhi] which creates the debate by its absence. “
Mr. Chikhi, for his part, justifies his silence by the fact that the Stora report has not been formally communicated to the Algerian authorities . “It’s a Franco-French report, ” he told Al-Jazeera on March 22 . It was not sent to us officially so that we are under an obligation, at least morally, to respond to its content. “
“Self-love reaction”
The confusion around the role of Mr. Chikhi in this memorial dialogue has freed the word of historians, while dissatisfaction with the director of the Archives has been smoldering for a long time. In 2016, the historian Fouad Soufi, former deputy director alongside Mr. Chikhi, had already rebelled by publishing a column in the daily El Watan denouncing “the agony” and “the slow death” of the National Archives.
Five years later, the rebellion takes on a more collective dimension with the open letter addressed to Mr. Tebboune. The nine signatories demand the " right of access to the content of communicabl records are “ without that “interfere personal interpretations that are contrary to the spirit of the archives, which are a heritage of the nation.” By virtue of a law dating from 1988, the archives are “freely accessible after twenty-five years”, with the exception of judicial files (the period increases to fifty years), data relating to “the security of the ‘State and national defense’ (sixty years) or information of a medical or private nature (one hundred years).