Black Spring (Kabylie)

Black Spring
Date	April 2001 - 2002
Location	Algeria
Caused by	Berber activism
Methods	Demonstrations
Status	Ended
Casualties
Death(s)	126 killed
Injuries	thousands
Arrested	thousands

The Black Spring (Berber: Tafsut Taberkant) was a series of violent disturbances and political demonstrations by Kabyle activists in the Kabylie region of Algeria in 2001, which were met by repressive police measures and became a potent symbol of Kabyle discontent with the national government. The protests took place against a backdrop of long-standing cultural marginalization of the Highlander Kabyle, a homogeneous Berber linguistic group in Algeria (Berber speakers form some 25% - 35% of the total population, although exact numbers are disputed) despite the most rigid government-sponsored Arabization measures of the 1960s through the 1980s having been lifted. The name "Black Spring" alludes to the events known as the Berber Spring of the 1980s, in which mainly Kabyle civil society activists challenged the ban on Berber culture then in place, demanding cultural rights and democracy.

In 2001, a young Kabyle student, Guermah Massinissa, was arrested by Algerian gendarmes and later died inside the gendarmerie. This provoked large-scale riots in the Kabyle region, that lasted for months.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's government claimed that the real name of Massinissa was in fact Karim and that he was a jobless criminal aged 26. Several months after these statements, the government admitted that his real name was in fact Massinissa (named after the historical Berber king of ancient Algeria), and that he was an innocent high school student. The Minister of the Interior Yazid Zerhouni said that he "was badly informed". No apologies were given to the victim's family, however, and the riots did not stop. Bouteflika's government maintained that the Kabyles were being "manipulated by a foreign hand".

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Wikipedia