« All men are born free and equal in rights ». That’s what the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen says. But it is easy to prove that this equality has never existed for us, the indigenous Algerians.

These are our rights, as understood by the bloodthirsty scoundrels and rapacious pirates who, under the pretext of colonisation, brought us the so-called ‘benefits’ of their ‘civilisation’.

They consist of seeing the lands on which we were born, which from father to son we fertilised with our labour, which gave us the means to live freely and proudly, taken over by our « benefactors ».

It’s true that we have the « right » to work on these lands that have been stolen from us, 10 and 12 hours a day for a ridiculous salary of five francs. But life is expensive in Algeria, very expensive for us and our families.

We have another ‘right’ that is not disputed by the patriotic mass grave builders, on the contrary, and that is the right to go and die on the battlefields in defence of so generous France. In 1914 and the years that followed, we benefited greatly from this. We were even armed against our racial brothers who had the courage to resist the invaders. No doubt in the name of the « right of peoples to self-determination ».

We have another ‘right’ that is not disputed by the patriotic mass grave builders, and that is the right to go and die on the battlefields in defence of France, which is so generous. In 1914 and the years that followed, we benefited greatly from this. We were even armed against our racial brothers who had the courage to resist the invaders. No doubt in the name of the ‘right of peoples to self-determination’.

We also have to endure without saying a word all the vexations that the whims of administrators and offices insist on imposing on us.

Italian fascism is no more odious than the methods of colonisation employed by the officials of the French Republic. So it’s hardly surprising that, with their spoils dying of hunger, and with no alternative but to beg or to slave like convicts for a pitiful wage, a great many natives are fleeing this « big stick » civilisation.

Many have told themselves that, since they were good at defending France, they had the right to find on its soil, by working, enough to make a living.

In fact, the condition of the indigenous living in France is nothing to be compared with the condition of the one that stayed in Algeria.

When he arrives, even if he is jobless, he finds with the Algerians an aid that is hardly ever given in other circles.

Of course, he is exploited, but not as savagely as as what he endured in his home country.

Naturally, the big landowners and slave traders of Algeria and Tunisia do not look kindly on this emigration [from Algeria to France], which deprive them of huge profits. So, to prevent it, they resort to political scoundrels who have nothing to refuse them.

And what the government of the National Bloc under Poincaré had not done, the government of the Lefts Bloc under Herriot did not fear to try.

Thus one could read recently in the daily paper Le Quotidien that a regulation was going to be instituted for « the admission of indigenous workers to metropolitan France. »

This regulation aims at, as declared Mr. Marius Moutet, a member of the ad-hoc Commission, “allowing the progressive and judicious penetration of indigenous elements responding, by their physical and professional capacities, to the requirements of the various sectors of the national metropolitan activities”.

“The Commission wanted that the indigenous who comes to work in France would not be exposed to leaving his household, without having the prior certainty of finding in France at least the equivalent of what he is abandoning. »

The interministerial commission, whose work was chaired by Mr. Duvernoy, Director of Algerian Affairs at the Ministry of the Interior, also decided the creation, in France, of organisations for assistance and protection for indigenous workers.

“The Ministry of the Interior has decided that these measures will be applied starting October 1st 1924.”

Therefore, from the 1st of October, administrators will be able to prevent the departure to France of all those they previously boarded when it was a matter of fighting against those they named barbarians. I know, and other will know if they haven’t yet realised, who the barbarians are. They are the hypocritical politicians who have nothing to envy to Mussolini. And to show this hypocrisy clearly, I state loud and clear that any indigenous leaves his country only because he cannot live there anymore, because there he is abominably oppressed and exploited. He is a slave that they want to keep for those that have stripped him of his native land.

What he abandons in Algeria, M. Marius Moutet, “socialist” deputy, is a bit of misery.

This is what an Algerian tells you and who adds : “Take care that one day the pariahs get fed up and would take the guns you taught them to handle to direct them against their true enemies, in the name of the right to life, and not, as before, for a stepmotherly and criminal so-called motherland.”

In Le Libertaire, n° 242, 16 August 1924.

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Saïl Mohamed biography : Saïl Mohamed, LIFE AND REVOLT OF AN ALGERIAN ANARCHIST (https://cnt-ait.info/2019/03/16/sail-mohamed-en)