CONFIDENTIAL
ALGERIA
Report by HM Embassy, Algiers.
General Observations
1.
The assessment is limited to the eleven year period since President Boumédienne seized power.
2.
The Algerians run a fairly successful smokescreen round their security operations. Not even an informal guess can be offered as to the numbers of 'political' prisoners. But the low standard of living among the mass of the people and the growing population pressure on all social and natural resources enable the regime to economise on the apparatus of repression. The loss of job, home, place at university or school, is a threat most cannot face.
3.
The new Constitution, unlike the 1963 Constitution, does not include support for the International Convention on the Rights of Man.
Right No.
(i)
(ii)
Along with assassination, imprisonment without trial is the preferred method of dealing with political opposition at the upper level. (Lower down, blocking employment, education, and/or housing for the offender and his relatives is aheaper.) The trend is constant.
Rating suggested
by Post
Torture is the normal form of interro- gation, which may last weeks for political or security cases. The use of brain- washing techniques seems to be too refined, or expensive, for Algeria. There is no evidence of scientific or medical experi- mentation. There is perhaps a slight tendency to use the crudest forms of violence less than a few years ago.
(iii) Examples of adult servitude have been seen
in the south. One hears credible allega- tions of cases, particularly of minors, being held in servitude. The majority of women (consequently perhaps a third of the population) live in de facto servitude within their families.
(iv)
In common with some other countries, freedom of opinion is safeguarded in Algeria by the individual taking care not to express it if it diverges from accepted doctrine. The state has a monopoly of all the media,
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CONFIDENTIAL
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