Antoon De Baets Censorship of Historical Thought: a World Guide
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Antoon De Baets Censorship of Historical Thought: A World Guide 1945–2000 (Westport, Conn., & London: Greenwood Press, © 2002) Extracts for Africa 2 ALGERIA Warning: Please always quote the source below when using this information. Source: Antoon De Baets, Censorship of Historical Thought: A World Guide 1945–2000 (Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press, © 2002), 41–43 [Reproduced with permission of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, CT.] Note: Passages marked in yellow are updates added between 1 January 2002 (publication date of the book) and 1 March 2005. French Algeria 1962 When Algeria became independent, the French government exported many official documents to France, thus taking with them vital sources of Algerian history. Algeria 1965– In August 1965 nationalist and journalist Mohammed Harbi (1933–), member of the Front de Libération Nationale, consultant to the Ιvian negotiations (1961), secretary-general of the Foreign Ministry (1961–62), political adviser to Prime Minister (from 1963 President) Ahmed Ben Bella (1962– 65), and editor of Révolution africaine (1963–64), was arrested and sentenced without charge or trial to five years’ imprisonment because he had opposed Colonel Houari Boumedienne’s June 1965 coup. Between the coup and his arrest he had lived in clandestinity. He was held in isolation from August 1965 to November 1969, when he was released and placed under house arrest, first in the south, later in the northeast of Algeria. In the spring of 1973, he escaped to France, where he studied history, wrote critical works on Algerian history and nationalism, and edited Les Archives de la révolution algérienne (1981), a book of documents on the Algerian Revolution (1954–62) and the years before (1943–54). All his works were banned in Algeria. He was a lecturer in sociology at several universities in Paris (1975–80, 1985– 89). From 1989 he has been a senior lecturer at the Political Sciences Department of the University of Paris–VIII (Saint-Denis). He was involved in human rights campaigns for the Islamic world. 1971– Censorship of history was reportedly intensified with the establishment of a Centre National d’Études Historiques (National Center of Historical Studies), which controlled historical research. 1980 In March Mouloud Mammeri (1917–), Berber poet, professor of literature at Algiers University and director at the Centre de Recherches Anthropologiques, Préhistoriques et Ethnographiques (until 1980), author of Poèmes kabyles anciens (Paris 1980), was barred from addressing a conference on the history of Berber poetry at Tizi-Ouzou University in the Kabyle region. It sparked a rising of Berber students, who claimed that the government was suppressing Berber culture. Problems began in 1962, when Ben Bella chose Arabic as the national language and rejected the Berber elements in Algeria’s past. In January and February 1980, the government had decided to establish a precise timetable for the “arabization” of public administration, the economic sector, and higher education. 1986–87 Among the persons placed under town arrest restrictions from November 1986 to March 1987 was archivist Abdelkarim Badjadja (1945–). In March 1987 the restrictions, for which no official reasons were given, were lifted. 1996 In January Khaled Aboulkacem, archivist at L’Indépendant newspaper, was killed, and a colleague of his was wounded, in an attack by suspected islamist gunmen as they left their offices. pre-1996– In February 1996 Benjamin Stora (1950–), history professor at the University of Paris-VIII and author of Histoire de l’Algérie depuis l’indépendance (1994), born in a Jewish family and living in France since 1962, announced that he would go into exile in an Asian country because of persistent anti- Semitic attacks in the Algerian press and anonymous threats after his film Les Années algériennes had been shown on television in September 1991. Also see France (1952: Julien; 1956: Marrou; 1960: Massignon, Vidal-Naquet; 1962–68: Soustelle; 1966–71: Pontecorvo; 1996–99: Einaudi); United States (1970–72: Ahmed); Uruguay (1968: Pontecorvo). Sources Amnesty International, Report (London) 1968–69: 25; 1969–70: 28; 1980: 322; 1981: 351; 1982: 316; 1983: 297; 1988: 229. Article 19; Information, Freedom and Censorship: World Report 1991 (London 1991) 353. Bonnaud, R., “Mohammed Harbi: Un Historien Matérialiste”, Le Quinzaine Littéraire, 1993, no.617: 23–24. Déjeux, J., La Littérature Algérienne Contemporaine (Paris 1975) 66–68, 78. —, Dictionnaire des Auteurs Maghrébins de Langue Française (Paris 1984) 157–59. Gordon, D.C., Self-determination and History in the Third World (Princeton 1971) 159. Index on Censorship, 4/80: 67; 5/80: 37–42; 4–5/94: 151–53, 254–55; 2/96: 80; 2/97: 79; 5/98: 15. Jones, D., ed., Censorship: A World Encyclopedia (London/Chicago 2001) 34 (Mammeri); 33, 1027–28 (Harbi). 3 Naylor, P.C., & A.A. Heggoy, Historical Dictionary of Algeria (Metuchen 1994) 213–14. Stora, B., “Deuxième Exil”, L’Histoire, February 1996: 102. 4 ANGOLA See South Africa (1953–: Davidson). 5 BENIN Warning: Please always quote the source below when using this information. Source: Antoon De Baets, Censorship of Historical Thought: A World Guide 1945–2000 (Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press, © 2002) [Reproduced with permission of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, CT.] Note: Passages marked in yellow are updates added between 1 January 2002 (publication date of the book) and 1 March 2005. 1972– After the coup by Mathieu Kérékou of the Parti Communiste du Dahomey, a Marxist regime was established. Traditional religious rituals were attacked and major sacred sites destroyed. Sources Jones, D., ed., Censorship: A World Encyclopedia (London/Chicago 2001) 214. 6 BOTSWANA See Zimbabwe (pre-1974: Mudenge). 7 BURKINA FASO Warning: Please always quote the source below when using this information. Source: Antoon De Baets, Censorship of Historical Thought: A World Guide 1945–2000 (Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press, © 2002), 85–86 [Reproduced with permission of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, CT.] Note: Passages marked in yellow are updates added between 1 January 2002 (publication date of the book) and 1 March 2005. 1983–92 Between October 1983 and 1992, Joseph Ki-Zerbo (1922–), history professor at Ouagadougou University (1957–), specialist in the history of Black Africa, founder (1970) and leader of the socialist opposition party Union Progressiste Voltaique, was forced into exile by the military regime, first in Ivory Coast, then in Senegal. In Senegal he was a researcher at the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire, Cheikh Anta Diop University. He also reconstituted the center that he had founded in Upper Volta in 1980 as the Centre de Recherche pour le Développement Endogène. In June 1984 he was accused by the authorities of having been behind the conspiracy which had planned a coup for 27 May 1984. President Thomas Sankara called him “pro-imperialist” because of his contacts with the French Socialist Party. He was sentenced to a term of imprisonment in absentia. During his exile all his previous equipment and his library of 11,000 volumes had reportedly been destroyed or dispersed. In 1995 he was a member of Parliament for the opposition Parti pour la Démocratie et le Progrès and director of the Centre d’Ιtudes pour le Développement Africain. He was a member of UNESCO’s Executive Council (1972–78) and occupied a position at the United Nations University. In 1997 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, an alternative Nobel Peace Prize. Sources Africa Contemporary Record, 1973: B 744–45. Degenhardt, H.W. ed., Revolutionary and Dissident Movements: An International Guide (Harlow 1988) 30. “Gewalt is die Software der Geschichte”, Südwind-Magazin, September 1996: 28–30. Index on Censorship, 2/86: 16, 18. Joseph Ki-Zerbo (1997) (WWW-text 1997). Keesings Historisch Archief, 1985: 110. 8 BURUNDI Warning: Please always quote the source below when using this information. Source: Antoon De Baets, Censorship of Historical Thought: A World Guide 1945–2000 (Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press, © 2002), 86–87 [Reproduced with permission of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., Westport, CT.] Note: Passages marked in yellow are updates added between 1 January 2002 (publication date of the book) and 1 March 2005. 1972– Successive governments have denied the genocide of Hutu in 1972. An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Hutu (3.5 percent of the population) were killed by the government of Colonel Michel Micombero between 30 April and early July 1972 after an attempted coup on 29 April. An estimated 2,000 Tutsi were also killed. In 1985 an Anglican missionary reported that it had become “a tacit crime against the state...to mention 1972 in the open.” 1980s In the late 1980s, Tharcisse Nsabimana, a Burundian student (and later historian in Burundi) in historian Steven Feierman’s graduate class in East African history at the University of Wisconsin- Madison in the United States resisted in writing an assignment on “the relationships between pastoralists and agriculturalists in Great Lakes history”, on the grounds that “such a paper would be illegal in Burundi”. 1988 In late August or early September, Augustin Nsanze (1953–), a history lecturer at Bujumbura University, was arrested with six others after signing an open letter to President Pierre Buyoya criticizing the government’s policy toward members of the Hutu community and the killing, in August 1988, of thousands of Hutu by government troops. No formal charges were brought against them but the authorities alleged that they had incited racial hatred. His whereabouts were not known. He was released later. He possibly went to Kenya and wrote two books on the contemporary political history of Burundi. [1993–] During the armed conflict many repositories and archives were destroyed. Sources Albada, J. van, “‘Memory of the World’: Report on Destroyed and Damaged Archives”, Archivum, 1996, no.42: 11. Amnesty International, Report 1989 (London 1989) 38. Index on Censorship, 4/85: 30–31 (quote from missionary: 30); 10/88: 35.