Khalida Messaoudi is exactly four years older than Algeria, her country of birth, which succeeded to independence from France in 1962 after a series of bloody wars. She grew up with four brother and sisters, two boys and two girls, in a respected Kabylic family. Here she became acquainted with the Islam of Algeria, which is tolerant and laicistic in its traditional essence. Each person is responsible to God alone. and the privacy of belief is respected. Her father, a civil servant, wanted to provide her with as good an education as possible. Which meant that Messaoudi went to a respected lyceum (girl's grammar school). She had to confront the Arabisation of the school system here, one of the many wrong decisions made by the ruling socialist-military unified party FLN (National Liberation Front), a system characterised by corruption and mismanagement. Messaoudi began working as a maths teacher in 1982. She attempted to counter the wave of Arabisation and Islamisation and argued in favour of a level of education for children that corresponds to the world standard.

At the beginning of the 80's she made her first political appearance by attempting to make inroads against the new FLN government laws hostile to women. The new voting law allowed men to vote in place of their wives. The new travel law made travelling alone for women forbidden. The new family law determined that women would immediately become wards of their male relatives or husbands for the period of their lives. They were also exposed to strong prejudice when it came to divorce and inheritance law. These laws represent a break in the constitution, which prescribes the same rights and obligations for men and women. Together with feminists, communists and the "Mudjahedat", the old women partisans from the war of liberation, Khalida Messaoudi collected 10,000 signatures against the family law and demonstrated on the street with thousands of women. The travel law had to be repealed due to the strong pressure of the women, but the family law was ratified in 1984. This represented one more step taken by the government towards Islamism and away from democracy.

On 15th March 1985 Messaoudi founded the "Association for the Equality of Women and Men in the Face of the Law", which existed until 1989 (="Association pour l'egalité devant la loi entre les femmes et les hommes"), She was a vanguard for the civil movement for women's rights in Algeria and also sympathised with the rise in the cultural movement of the Kabyles (Berbers) who are demanding the recognition of their language and cultures.

In 1988, following serious unsettlements, the government decided to search for a way out of the country's economic and social crisis by creating a democratic opening. This led to the formation of more than 50 parties and newspapers critical of the government. This policy does not just allow new democratic parties such as the left of liberal RCD (Rally for Culture and Democracy) to be formed, which Khalida Messaoudi is close to, but also all Islamic parties such as the FIS (Islamic Salvation Movement). In 1990 Messaoudi founded the feminist "Independent Association for the Triumph of Women's Rights" ("Association indépendant pour le triomphe des droits des femmes" AITDF), whose president she became.

In the growing conflict between the government party FLN and the Islamic FIS, Messaoudi acts as a representative of the "third force", which demands a civil democratic and laicistic Algeria, that respects and reflects the traditional features of the multiracial state. "I stand between the old FLN, which has systematically exploited Algeria for almost 35 years, and has exploited the country and the almost illiterate jobless and homeless youth, who are fascinated by fundamentalism. I want neither the one society nor the other, and have been fighting for a new model since 1979."

The FLN state, which has declared Islam to be the state religion, has hardly provided any resistance against the Islamic movement, but instead has attempted to instrumentalise it against the socialist and democratic movements. Democrats and women have increasingly become the victims of acts of terror, for which Islamic party organisations financially supported by the Arabic states have been held to account. These were very popular at first, since they supported the poorest of the poor by distributing alms in the mosques and offered the youth with no perspectives a simple world image. If they were not affiliated to Islamism, Islamic propaganda used the women as scapegoats and in the eyes of many, they were held responsible for being unemployed, even though only one percent of all jobs were occupied by women at the beginning of the 90's in Algeria.

Messaoudi decided against going abroad as so many others did, and remained in her own country. She has being living underground since then and changes her location every day with the help of relations and friends. She had to give up her work as a teacher. She has become a symbol of resistance. She managed to escape two attempts on her life by chance. She continues with her political work despite the almost unbearable conditions: She became Vice President of the "Movement for the Republic" (Mouvement pour la république, MPR) in November 1993. She makes a show of the inactive role of the west in her political speeches and points untiringly at the ten of thousands of civilian victims in this "war against the people", and particularly the violations against women's rights.

"We Algerian, Moroccan, Iranian Algerian and Sudanese women have joined together to demand something that is a matter of course in the West: the universality of human rights which apply to everyone independent of gender, skin colour or religion. In my country however, the enemies of women always link the term universality with the attribute "international", which at the same time means "western". Even the members of the United Nations appear deep down to believe that the suppression of Algerian women is founded on the culture of our country - and under the pretext of "respect for other cultures" one simply has to respect and accept the suppression of women.
We Algerian women call that a "cultural trap". All the countries of the west have fallen into this trap. They believe that suppression is a cultural question - and do not want to understand that it is a purely political question. The suppression of women can be derived from our history and culture just as little as it can be derived from that of the western countries - even if some Algerian men would like it this way." 
[the complete manuscript of the speech can be found on a special page in the section on "Documents on the Topic of Women's Rights"]

She was voted into parliament for the RCD party in 1997. She dedicated all her efforts to the campaign "A Million Signatures", through which she wanted to change the family law to the benefit of more rights for Algerian families. On submitting her declaration of solidarity on the occasion of the bloody put down of the Berber protests, she was excluded from the party by her fellow fighters. She sees the reason for this in her standing up for women's rights. Khalida Messaoudi is joint founder of the association "S.O.S. Femmes en Détresse".

[Author: Dorette Wesemann, Edited by: Ragnar Müller]

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