Boualem Sansal is free! In the text below, Senator Viviane Teitelbaum recounts this battle, shares her commitment and explains why this case goes far beyond one man:
A year after his arrest, the writer Boualem Sansal is free! It is a relief.
Arrested in Algiers, this novelist was deprived of his freedom for exercising his most basic right: that of speaking freely. Throughout his life, Boualem Sansal embodied the courage of truth: the courage to denounce censorship, obscurantism and totalitarian excesses, whether religious or political.
His novels and essays, translated into many languages, warned the world about the dangers of Islamism's totalitarian drift, while calling for reconciliation and dialogue between peoples.
Through his work, Boualem Sansal defended democracy, secularism, human rights, feminism, and the fight against anti-Semitism, homophobia and all forms of hatred. He championed a demanding, universal conception of human dignity.
In the Senate, as elsewhere, we spoke out against his arbitrary and shameful detention. On 3 November, the institutional committee unanimously adopted a resolution demanding his immediate release.
Today he is free. We are delighted about this.
Beyond his own case, Boualem Sansal's fate is emblematic of a wider crackdown targeting freedom of expression, the press, women's rights, and activists.
This erosion of freedoms, wherever it occurs, cannot be ignored.
I am proud to have carried this demand for freedom forward and to have reaffirmed our solidarity and the universal values of freedom without compromise.
I said it in committee: the right to free speech and creation must never be limited by fear or injustice.
