17 May 2011
ALGIERS - They were all about 50-years-old, divorced, widows or unmarried, and lived alone. 17 of them were killed in a few months in Algeria, almost always at home, in large or small cities and in villages.
They did not know each other, held no contacts, but are now part of the numbers of a phenomenon that is scaring Algeria: single women murdered for a few worthless jewels or simply for pleasure. From the start of the year 17 have been killed and not by the same hand, but as the result of a violent process which Algeria has to deal with and ask itself if the result of social degradation or some other factor.
There is no mystery, since the Algerian police has always managed to track down and arrest the perpetrators, but rather a drama that is apparently the one posed by women's loneliness in a Country, like others in North Africa, where a single woman is deemed an anomaly. But these women, the victims of this massacre, are still there accusing an entire society, which perhaps does not understand them or does not understand or share their decisions.
Of the last two women on this macabre list, one lived in Mohammadia, the other in Ruisseau, a working-class neighbourhood in Algiers. Neither of the two was aware of the existence of the other, but their end was the same: slaughtered at home by amateur robbers (they were caught almost immediately), their bodies were discovered by neighbours.
Another thing they had in common, like most of the victims, was that they knew their murderers, who at some point had done small jobs for them to whom they showed kindness and perhaps generosity. They were repaid with death. The murderer of one of them is a man, the other was murdered by kids who stormed the victim's house killing her and taking anything that could be sold, even for a few dinars.
Now, while the police emphasises, with good reason, that none of the murderers went unpunished, the people are asking themselves what is happening, above all whether the solidarity that fuels neighbourly relations in Arab societies is being lost. And, among the causes, they identify the restlessness of the younger generations that, only a few days ago in Algiers, as in other cities, fuel an atmosphere of blind violence that often erupts unannounced, amidst assaults and robberies, thefts and murders. Often they come from the restless banlieue, but they also include kids from normal families that have no real problems in life.
The main driving factor is boredom, the kind of boredom that, to pass time, makes them shout late at night to wake people up, but in recent years drugs have also become an issue. And the government has issued an alert to watch out: the police is warned.
Source: ANSAmed.
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