HIBAPRESS
The election of the Algerian-French writer Boualem Sansal, imprisoned for about a year in the prisons of the Algerian regime, constituted a painful slap to the military regime in Algeria, which tried in vain to silence the voice of one of the most prominent writers critical of its history and policies.
Victory of freedom in the face of tyranny
The Belgian Royal Academy of French Language and Literature announced the election of Sansal as a new member, in a symbolic step considered a victory for freedom in the face of tyranny.
The Academy said in its statement that "Boualem Sansal embodies the creative function of the writer, which is inseparable from freedom," a statement that carries a clear message against the regime that imprisoned him on charges of "harming national unity," a ready-made charge that the military has long used to muzzle the voices of opponents and free thinkers.
A continuous campaign by Algeria against intellectuals and media professionals
The writer, who is eighty years old and was honored in 2007 with the Francophone Literature Prize from the same academy, has turned, despite his ordeal in prison, into a global symbol of freedom and the dignity of thought, while the Algerian regime has become in the position of the accused before the world because of its ongoing repressive campaign against intellectuals and media professionals.
The rulers of the El Mouradia Palace in Algeria hoped that the imprisonment of Boualem Sansal would turn into a means of intimidating free voices, but the result came in reverse, as his election consolidated his position as a writer who resists oppression, and revealed again the true face of a regime that lives on suppressing creators and demonizing those who disagree with it.
While the world celebrates Boualem Sansal as a symbol of liberation and creativity, Algeria is sinking more and more into its moral and political isolation, after it has become known as a state that imprisons thinkers and stifles freedoms.
