Bachir Hadj Ali

Bachir Hadj Ali, Algerian poet and political activist, was born in the Casbah of Algiers on December 10, 1920 to a family from Aït Hammad (Azeffoun) in Kabylia. He attended the Koranic school and the French school but, to help his family, in 1937 decided not to enter the Normal School for Teachers. After his demobilization, in 1945 he joined the Algerian Communist Party (PCA). In 1948 he became editor-in-chief of the newspaper Liberté, the central organ of the PCA, joined its secretariat in 1951 and was in 1953 sentenced to two years in prison by the colonial courts for endangering state security. Remaining in hiding throughout the war of national liberation, Bachir Hadj Ali negotiated in 1956 with Sadek Hadjerès the individual integration into the ALN of the “Liberation Fighters”, a military organization of Algerian communists, created in 1954, including he is responsible. He then took over the management of the PCA. After Independence, President Ben Bella banned the PCA in November 1962. Bachir Hadj Ali is, alongside Mouloud Mammeri, Jean Sénac, Mourad Bourboune, one of the founders of the Union of Algerian Writers, from which he resigned in 1963. After Houari Boumediène took power on June 19, 1965, he created the “Organization of Popular Resistance” (ORP) with the left of the FLN, Hocine Zahouane and Mohammed Harbi. In September he was arrested and tortured in the premises of Military Security in Algiers. Transferred in November to Lambèse prison, he wrote L'Arbitraire on sheets of toilet paper which he managed to transmit, hidden in hollowed-out cigarettes, to his wife Lucette Larribère during her visits. The text which describes the torture he suffered, and from which he will have serious after-effects, was published in 1966 by Éditions de Minuit. Under censorship and therefore not including any political remarks, his letters from prison (Letters to Lucette, op. cit.) reflect his literary and musical sensitivity by showing even more the internalization of the…

Known for

Acting

Born

1920-12-10 · Algiers, Alger, France

Died

1991-05-08