Amal At Mɛammar: “I carry the oppression of the Kabyles in my flesh”

Repatriated from Ukraine by the Red Cross in the aftermath of the Russian invasion, Kabyle activist Amal At Mɛammar (Bedrane) has just published a personal testimony that goes far beyond a mere individual account. Through her journey from her childhood in Agouni Gueghrane to her current activist involvement she provides an insider’s view of what the Kabyle struggle represents for an entire generation born under the yoke of state Arab-Islamic nationalism.

A testimony rooted in the body, not theory

The text opens with a phrase that encapsulates her entire approach: beyond political analyses, she writes, oppression is a violence she carries “in her own flesh.” This choice is not trivial. Amal At Mɛammar immediately rejects abstraction to anchor her words in lived experience, describing an identity confiscated since childhood: a banned mother tongue, a denied voice, and school indoctrination based on a nationalism that was not her own. She adds a dimension rarely highlighted in this type of activist narrative: that of a woman who, in her view, inherits a “model of silence” where the mere act of speaking out becomes an act of resistance.

It is this articulation between collective oppression (that of the Kabyle people) and singular experience (that of a woman, a daughter, an exile) that gives the text its power.

An assumed militant genealogy

The testimony is subsequently structured as a transmission. Amal At Mɛammar explicitly links her commitment to a lineage of intellectuals and figures of Berber cultural resistance:

• Mouloud Mammeri, whose work enabled the transcription of Tamazight despite its ban following independence;
• Ramdane Achab, forced into exile for defying that same ban;
• Karim Achab, an academic in Ottawa. She also mentions Ferhat Mehenni, recalling a path marked by repression, torture, exile, and the tragic loss of his son, who was assassinated in Paris—an episode she presents as the extreme price paid by certain activists.

This choice of filiation is not merely biographical: it embeds her own testimony in a long history, that of a movement that views itself as continuity rather than rupture.

Two founding traumas

The text revolves around two events presented as ruptures in the collective Kabyle memory:

1. The Black Spring of 2001 (Tafsut Taverkant), triggered by the death of Massinissa Guermah, a high school student killed inside a gendarmerie barracks. Amal At Mɛammar echoes the toll put forward by Kabyle organizations at the time: 128 dead and over 5,000 wounded by bullets during the suppression of subsequent protests.
2. The forest fires of the summer of 2021, which she describes as a still-vivid trauma: over a hundred dead, roofless families, and ruined farmers. She blames the state for a lack of rescue operations and a political management of the catastrophe, which she directly links to the ensuing trial—thirty-eight people sentenced, including activists she names, such as Mohamed Laskri (Lvaxuc) and Syphax Mamou. In this regard, she invokes Benjamin Constant to describe a people she deems stripped of all sovereignty facing the state.

Repression placed also in the present

The testimony refuses to confine oppression to the past. Amal At Mɛammar mentions student friends she says are prosecuted on baseless political accusations, as well as the case of academic Mira Moknache, whom she presents as targeted solely for her affiliation with a dissident movement. For her, these trajectories demonstrate that a minority remains, to this day, deprived of a political voice, pushing a growing number of Kabyles into exile, particularly toward France.

Family memory as the ultimate anchor

The narrative closes on an even more intimate note: that of her father, a professor in Algiers forced to abandon his profession in 1993 under pressure from the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which viewed him as foreign to the dominant dogmatic norm, pressure she directly links to his death. By concluding with this paternal figure, Amal At Mɛammar completes the circle opened at the beginning: the collective Kabyle history, as she tells it, can only be understood through what she directly experienced within her own family.

Amal At Mɛammar’s Testimony: The Experience of Oppression as a Starting Point

Beyond theories and political analyses, the violence of oppression is a reality that I carry in my own flesh.

I come from a space where the majority imposes its law on the minority, where the individual is dispossessed of their most intimate identity.

I belong to those whose mother tongue was torn away, whose voice was confiscated, and whose very existence as free subjects was denied. I am part of those individuals rendered invisible, deprived of the fundamental right to be themselves on their own lands.

Since childhood, I have been subjected to rigid indoctrination, a political, philosophical, and religious vision based on Arab-Islamic nationalism, to the detriment of what could have been my own. Our knowledge and openness were intentionally limited, solely for the purpose of submitting us and turning us into pawns serving the state.

As a woman, I also inherited a model of silence, an injunction to erasure, where speaking out is already an act of resistance.

I am one of those denied the right to choose: choosing one’s language, choosing one’s convictions, choosing one’s way of existing. My existence has long been framed, constrained, and hindered.

Yet, within me subsists a culture that refuses to disown itself, an identity that resists any attempt at erasure, and a struggle waged since 1962.

I am part of those who reject the obligation to become what they are not or to adhere to what contradicts their values and principles. Facing a government trying to tear away my inalienable rights—those I inherited from my ancestors and that every human being possesses by nature—I refuse both sacrifice and submission.

My struggle, begun at a very young age, has been shaped by figures and tragic experiences that deeply awakened my political consciousness.

My journey has been nourished by great figures of Berber cultural resistance.

It is thanks to intellectuals like Mouloud Mammeri that the writing and transmission of my mother tongue, Tamazight, are possible today, whereas the Algerian state had undertaken to suppress it, going so far as to ban its use after the departure of the French colonizer.

His work was extended by publishers and researchers like Ramdane Achab, forced into long years of exile in France for defying this ban. Attending one of his conferences in our native village of Agouni Gueghrane marked a decisive turning point in my path, just like discovering the work of Karim Achab, senior lecturer at the University of Ottawa.

My commitment has also been deeply influenced by the trajectory of Ferhat Mehenni. This former political science graduate sacrificed his life for his people’s existence, enduring repression, torture, exile, and the tragic loss of his son assassinated by Algerian services in Paris. His destiny embodies, in my eyes, the price some are ready to pay for freedom.

To these intellectuals is added the influence of Kabyle artists, writers, and poets who made art a weapon of resistance to denounce oppression, becoming targets of power themselves.

My consciousness is just as much the product of collective tragedies.

I think of Massinissa Guermah, a young high school student assassinated in 2001 inside a gendarmerie barracks, a tragedy that originated the Black Spring (Tafsut Taverkant). When Kabyle citizens took to the street to denounce this injustice, the state responded with weapons, causing the death of 128 citizens and wounding over five thousand others by bullets.

More recently, the Kabyle people experienced the trauma of the summer of 2021.

The devastating fires cost the lives of over a hundred people. Several families lost their homes, and many farmers lost their sole means of subsistence. This is an event I can never erase from my memory, nor from that of my compatriots.

We were a people deprived of any means of defense against an armed state whose primary mission should have been to protect its citizens.

This central power sent neither aid nor ambulances. At the very moment civil society mobilized to put out the fires and save lives, the state orchestrated a strategy of political concealment.

This tragedy was then instrumentalized through a political trial targeting thirty-eight people, sentenced to heavy prison terms, among whom were activists of the Kabyle cause such as Mohamed Laskri, known as Lvaxuc, and Syphax Mamou.

In light of Benjamin Constant’s thought, the people found themselves totally dispossessed of their sovereignty, leaving power free rein to accentuate its oppression. This testimony relies on tangible facts that the authorities strive to conceal.

These injustices do not solely belong to the past. They continue to strike those around me and the intellectual figures of my region.

I think of my student friends, falsely accused of political crimes, as well as university lecturers like Mira Moknache, prosecuted and silenced on the basis of empty judicial files. Her only fault is her affiliation with a dissident political movement and her courageous denunciation of the abuses committed by the state.

These shattered trajectories demonstrate that we belong to a minority deprived of voice and political weight against a centralized authority exercising absolute domination.

For many, facing this deadlock and the permanent threat of imprisonment, the only issue remains exile toward France.

Finally, this struggle is also rooted in the memory of my own father.

A former professor in Algiers, he was forced to abandon his profession in 1993 under threats from the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which viewed him as foreign to the dominant dogmatic norm. This absolute rejection of his identity and religious singularity would ultimately cost him his life.

My personal story is only one among many. It is that of a young Kabyle woman who refuses to see her identity, her language, her memory, and her freedom relegated to silence.

— Amal At Mɛammar (Bedrane)