Tizi Ouzou

   A city located in eastern Algeria with a population of 77,475. It is the capital of the province of the same name, département/ wilaya Tizi Ouzou. Its Berber name means "the prickly furze pass." Tizi Ouzou is the symbolic capital of Kabyle resistance and the historical center of Berberism in North Africa. Kabyles have always been more politically active and hostile to the Arabic-speaking central government policies of Berber exclusion, humiliation, and neglect (hogra) than the rest of their countrymen. Since the late 1940s, they have been campaigning for the official status of the Berber language and culture in Algerian politics.

   Over the past five years, Tizi Ouzou has gained international attention, as it has become the center of Berber activism and unrest. In April 2001, also called Black Spring, Tizi Ouzou erupted after an eighteen-year-old man named Massinissa Guermah died in the custody of the gendarmes (paramilitary rural police). Within days, Guermah's death led to protests throughout the entire Kabyle area, over seven wilayas (départements), expressing the hatred of hogra and the rejection of poverty, denouncing the murderous regime, and calling for the removal of the gendarmes forces from Kabylia. Although the revolt began peacefully enough, it degenerated into rioting and looting. The gendarmes fought back with live ammunition, killing nearly one hundred unarmed Kabyles in a period of 60 days. On 14 June 2001, in one of the largest demonstrations the country has ever seen, hundreds of thousands of Kabyles poured into Algiers. armed clashes broke out, and four protestors were killed.

   The demand for the recognition of the Tamazight (Berber) language is always present. However, contrary to the strongly identitybased protests of June 1998, at the time of the death of (leading Berber singer) Lounes Matoub, the youth in revolt attacked all the public buildings, all the symbols of the state, and all the dignitaries suspected of corruption. They also attacked the symbols of the Berber-dominated political parties, the Front des Forces Socialistes (FFS) and the Rassemblement pour la Culture et la Démocratie (RCD), as well as those of the establishment Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) condemning their appalling municipal management, their membership of the liberal consensus, and their bourgeois political practices. Cities like Tizi Ouzou and Bijaia continue to be the scenes of sporadic protests not only against poverty and hogra but also against Arab nationalism, the state's official ideology.

   See also Berber Spring.