INTERNATIONAL PEN WOMEN'S DAY- MARCH 8, 2003 Impunity and Freedom of Expression

With those ominous words, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) vowed in January 1995 to carry on its campaign of premeditated attacks on the Algerian media. Algeria was probably the most dangerous place in the world in which to be a journalist or writer during the 1990s, when over 60 editors, reporters and media workers were killed, and over 500 fled into exile.

The terrorists preferred killing journalists over generals because they believed they could do more damage to the government's cause that way. As Hacene Ouandjeli, editor-in-chief of Libert, put it, "They want to kill us for the simple reason that journalists are defending the ideals of democracy, which are not the ideals of the fundamentalists. We are adversaries that have to be eliminated and killed.

Women were not immune from the terror. PEN documented the murder of nine female journalists during the height of the country's civil war in the early 1990's:

All of the killings were horrific. The murder of Sabour in May 1995 occurred at her family home; her assassins forced her parents to watch the murder. Sabour was just 22-years-old and had recently left journalism school. Brikh, a reporter for Radio Culture, was killed near her home in September 1995. It took authorities a week to identify her corpse.

These nine murdered female journalists, and many more who survived but were subjected to various threats and harassment, were doubly targeted: for their gender and for their presswork. "They started attacking women because they're a symbol," said journalist Mouloud Benmohamed, "Women are the backbone of the family. If you terrorize women, you terrorize the whole society."

Commenting on the targeting of women who deviate in any way from their very restricted prescribed role within an extremist framework, and the resulting gender-based censorship, Algerian author Acha Lemsine wrote in a 1995 essay:

Algerian women writers live under the twin threats of religious fundamentalism and a quasi-fascist military regime. For us, women's issues are issues of survival, our financial resources are nil and our psychological balance is weakened by fear and anxiety.... The intimidations of the regime and the threats of the Islamists have one purpose: to reduce us to silence. Fear is supposed to drive us away from critical thinking and writing, or stress and exile render us unable to produce any literary creation.... Arab and Muslim women need not only to have their lives saved, but also opportunities to create and write. Our voices must be strengthened; we need a network that will give us space for free expression, publication and international media exposure.

Although Algerian women have been victims of violence, they remain vital actors in their society. Since the late 1990s, they have been at the forefront of civil society, organizing for peace, democracy, human rights, religious freedom and equality in still dangerous conditions. Women journalists collected testimonies, took photographs and worked to break the silence that surrounded the civilian victims in Algeria. They have written and spoken out against government censorship as well as the extremist's agenda and violence. On an annual basis and despite threats to their lives, they have organized major demonstrations to commemorate International Women's Day. Their work is a tribute to the nine journalists and other women who lost their lives during Algeria's bloody internal conflict.