Bookstore in Algeria reopens after brief closure linked to Fatma Oussedik event, as publisher criticises censorship and rights violations. [Getty]
An Algerian bookshop that was raided and temporarily shut by police over a signing by the sociologist Fatma Oussedik has reopened ahead of schedule, the book’s publisher said in a statement on Tuesday.
The publisher, Koukou Editions, had said over the weekend that the police ordered the store’s closure for a month, but the reopening comes just three days later.
“Koukou editions is delighted with the reopening, this morning, of the Librairie des Beaux-Arts,” the publisher said in a statement, without providing further details.
The publisher lamented what it described as “censorship that is exercised on the margins of legality”, and the violation of “freedoms of intellectual creation”.
The book that prompted the raid, Oussedik’s “Rebellious Identities: Rethinking One’s Own History”, was based on field research of the Berber-speaking M’zab Valley region, according to Koukou.
In a weekend statement it had said police and other officials visited the bookstore two days before the signing to demand its cancellation, then returned on Saturday morning, prompting the shop to put off the event.
Nonetheless, the authorities came back in the afternoon to seize copies and shutter the store.
Koukou had cited Article 54 of the Constitution, which states that “publishing activity may be prohibited only by virtue of a court decision”.
The publishing house has been subject to censorship before, including in 2022, when it said 12 of its books — mainly touching on politics — had been banned from Algeria’s main book fair.
