Draft:Ferhat Abbas
| Ferhat Abbas | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Name | Ferhat Abbas |
| Other Names | Ferhat Abbas Mekki |
| Personal Details | |
| Birth Place | Algeria |
| Brith Date | 24 August 1899 |
| Death Place | Algiers, Algeria |
| Death Date | 24 December 1985 |
| Religion | Islam |
Ferhat Abbas Mekki was an Algerian fighter against French colonialism.
On 8 May 1945 CE, French authorities committed one of their most horrific massacres in Algeria, killing 45,000 Algerians over two weeks. Just as impactful as this massacre was on Algerians, it paved the way for them, and the people entered a new stage in their struggles for their country's independence.
Ferhat Abbas was one of the Algerian elites affected by this massacre. Prior to this, he had demanded the integration of Algerians with the French and denied the existence of an Algerian nation. However, witnessing these atrocities and massacres caused him to reform his method of struggle and become a fighter for Algerian independence.
Birth
He was born in the city of Taher, part of the Jijel Province, country of Algeria, in a farming family consisting of 12 members. His grandfather, named "Abbas", was one of the popular leaders of the revolution in the late nineteenth century.
Education
In 1921, Ferhat Abbas succeeded in obtaining a bachelor's degree, but was prevented from continuing his studies to join military service in the ranks of the French army in Annaba, where he remained for three years, and graduated from the army with the rank of sergeant.
Afterwards, Ferhat Abbas joined the University of Algiers to continue his studies in pharmacy, and at the university, the new personality of Ferhat Abbas was formed, who believed that France was his homeland and that there was no homeland called Algeria.
Ferhat Abbas did not abandon his Islamic principles at the university, and in 1924 established the Association of Muslim Students at the University of Algiers and also became a member of the North Africa Students Association; to gradually transform from being merely a serious student.
Political Activities
Ferhat Abbas's struggles in the 1920s and 1930s revolved around the idea of equal rights between Europeans and Algerians, and he also defended the citizenship of Algerians.
On the occasion of the centenary of the occupation of Algeria, Ferhat Abbas published a book in 1931 that highlighted his political view regarding the demand for equality that he had adopted, but French authorities prevented the publication of this book.
Ferhat Abbas's political activity coincided with the emergence of the national movement, and Abbas became one of its leaders. Messali Hadj bore the slogan of independence, and Sheikh Abdelhamid Ben Badis represented the Association of Muslim Scholars of this movement. Regarding reforms, Ferhat Abbas bore the flag of equality, before his thought turned to integration.
Support for Integration and Formation of an Algerian Federation with France
Three currents of the Algerian national movement in the nineteenth century were contradictory and had conflicting goals, so it was obvious that conflict between these currents would be apparent, especially after Ferhat Abbas's thoughts at that time reached the denial of the existence of a current.
At the Islamic Conference held in 1936, which brought together various currents of the Algerian national movement including Ferhat Abbas, he said his famous sentence: "I searched in history, asked the living and the dead, and visited the graves, but no. No one told me about this country" to deny the idea of an Algerian nation.
This statement provoked the president of the Association of Muslim Scholars, Sheikh Abdelhamid Ben Badis, and he responded to Ferhat Abbas in an article in the newspaper Al-Shihab: "This Islamic Ummah of Algeria is not France. It cannot be France and does not want to become France." Even if it wants to, it cannot become France, rather it is a nation that is distant from France in terms of language, morals, race, and religion."
Ferhat Abbas, continuing his uprising against the tendencies of the national movement, announced his support for the "Viollette Plan", which was rejected by most parties and personalities of the national movement.
This project was launched by Léon Blum, the then Prime Minister of France. And Maurice Viollette, who was the Governor-General of Algeria, required reforms in the constitution in exchange for France abandoning its role as an occupier, which was Ferhat Abbas's proposal at the time, to give equal rights between the French and Algerians.
To defend his beliefs, Ferhat Abbas established the "Popular Union" party, turned his pharmacy located in Sétif Province into his party headquarters, and held seminars and intellectual and political associations to promote his ideas and demands for equality between Algerians and French.
Fighting for France
Ferhat Abbas volunteered to defend France in World War II and witnessed the defeat of France with his own eyes. With the start of World War II in 1939 CE and at the age of forty, Ferhat Abbas volunteered and appeared in the French army to defend the French nation in the war against Nazism and before that had participated in battles defending Paris. After the fall, he left the French army.
Ferhat Abbas and the Struggle for Algeria
Ferhat Abbas began his struggle for Algeria with a new idea by issuing a statement requesting a solution for the situation of Algerians, naming this statement the "Manifesto of the Algerian People", and secretly entrusted it to Robert Murphy. The representative of the then President of the America in Algeria, following the entry of American forces into Algeria in November 1942, requested that the Allies find a solution for the region after the war. Afterwards, Abbas became hated by French officials, who arrested him, and he remained in prison until December 1943.
Following this, Ferhat Abbas founded the Friends of the Manifesto and Liberty movement and fought through it to achieve the demands of the Algerians.
The Last Straw
The radical change in the positions of Ferhat Abbas and most Algerian elites was shocking. This shock stemmed from the massacre of 8 May 1945, when the French killed tens of thousands of Algerians, especially since a large part of the massacres occurred in the city of Sétif, where Ferhat Abbas lived.
Abbas condemned these massacres and began acting against France because of them, resulting in his imprisonment again.
After that prison term, Abbas returned to political life through a new party called the Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto and participated in the French parliamentary elections, securing several of Algeria's seats.
With the outbreak of the Algerian Revolution on 1 November 1954 by the National Liberation Front, Ferhat Abbas joined the revolutionary party and became its representative in Paris, also negotiating in its name with Edgar Faure, the Prime Minister of France, for the formation of an independent Algeria.
Ferhat Abbas also became a financier of the revolution throughout his stay in France with money and medicine, and met more than once with Abane Ramdane – one of the leaders of the revolution – in France and Ahmed Ben Bella – the first President of Algeria.
And when he announced the formation of the first Provisional Government of Algeria in Tunisia, Ferhat Abbas was its first President, from September 1958 to August 1961, before Youssef Ben Khedda succeeded him.
Ferhat Abbas After Algerian Independence
After independence, Ferhat Abbas was elected as the head of the first Algerian Assembly after independence, but resigned on 13 September 1963 after opposing the proposed constitution of the National Liberation Front at that time.
Opponents of Ferhat Abbas shot at him, to the extent that his comrade Ahmed Ben Bella turned against him and imprisoned him in the south of the country, and he was only freed in May 1986 (CE).[1]
Houari Boumédiène turned against his associate Ben Bella and became the President of Algeria, and there Ferhat Abbas opposed what he called "individual rule" in Algeria, therefore:
In March 1976, he signed a "Statement to the People of Algeria" in which he condemned Boumédiène himself.
The latter placed him under house arrest before his release on 13 June 1978.
During the rule of Chadli Bendjedid, after being awarded the Medal of Resistance in October 1984, respect for Ferhat Abbas was restored.
Ferhat Abbas passed away one year later on 24 November 1985 (CE) and was buried in the Martyrs' Square of the Alia Cemetery of Elders and Fighters of the Algerian Resistance.
Notes
- ↑ Translator's note: The source text states release in 1986, but death is listed as 1985 in the following section.