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Title: Saïl Mohamed, 1894–1953 Author: Anonymous Date: November 18, 2005 Language: en Topics: Sail Mohamed, biography, Algeria Source: Retrieved on July 31, 2007 from https://web.archive.org/web/20070731091758/http://stiobhard.tripod.com/east/sail.html
SaĂŻl Mohamed Ameriane ben Amerzaine was born on 14 October 1894 at
Tarbeit-Beni-Ouglis in the Berber region of Kabylie, Algeria. Like many
Algerians, he recieved little schooling. A driver-mechanic by trade, all
his life he thirsted for culture and took great pains to educate
himself. From a Muslim Berber background, he became a convined atheist.
During the First World War he was interned for insubordination and then
desertion from the French Army. His sympathies for anarchism were
already developing.
At the end of the War, with the rebuilding of the anarchist movement, he
joined the organisation Union Anarchiste (UA). In 1923, with his friend
Sliman Kiouane, a singer, he founded the Committee for the Defence of
Indigenous Algerians. In his first articles he denounced the poverty of
the colonialised people and colonial exploitation. He became an expert
on the North African situation. He organised meetings with the anarchist
groups of the 17^(th) arrondissement of Paris on the exploitation of
North Africans, which were delivered both in Arabic and in French. SaĂŻl
set up an anarchist group in Aulnay-sous-bois and became one of its most
effective activists.
In 1929, he became secretary of a new committee: the Defence Committee
of Algerians against the Centenary Provocation (France were preparing to
celebrate the centenary of the conquest of Algeria on 5 July 1830). All
the tendencies of the anarchist movement, the UA, the
anarcho-syndicalist union Confederation Generale du Travail
syndicaliste-revolutionnaire (CGT-SR) and the Association de
Federalistes anarchistes (AFA) denounced “Murderous colonialism, bloody
masquerade”. They put forward the statement “Civilisation ? Progress ?
We say, Murder !”
Following this, SaĂŻl joined the CGT-SR, in which he created the Section
of Indigenous Algerians. The following year, with the Colonial
Exhibition in Paris, the anarchist movement restarted its campaign
against colonialism. Sail was in the forefront of this struggle.
In January 1932, he became the director of “L’Eveil Social, le journal
du peuple” (“Social Awakening, the journal of the people”). Following an
anti-militarist article he was prosecuted for “provocation of the
military to disobedience”. The Secours Rouge International, a satellite
organisation of the Communist Party, lent him their support, which he
rejected in the name of the victims of Stalinism.
In 1934, the “Saïl Mohamed Affair” burst onto the scene. The
demonstration of the fascist and anti-Semitic Leagues on 6 February 1934
set off a chain reaction throughout the workers’ movement. Saïl
collected arms and hid them. On 3 March he was arrested for “carrying
prohibited arms”. The workers’ movement gave him their support, except
for the Communist Party, which denounced him as an agent provocateur.
Condemned to a month in prison, then another for “retaining weapons of
war” he ended up serving four months in jail. He resumed the struggle.
“L’Eveil Sociale” merged with “Terre Libre” (“Free Earth”, the monthly
paper of the Alliance Libre des anarchistes du Midi — see Paul Rousenq).
SaĂŻl was responsible for bringing out the North African edition of
“Terre Libre”. He attempted to set up an Anarchist Group of Indigenous
Algerians, with various appeals in the anarchist press. At the same time
he continued to be active with the Union Anarchiste.
After the Francoist uprising in Spain, SaĂŻl joined the Sebastian Faure
Century, the French-speaking section of the Durruti Column, the
anarchist militia unit in September 1936, and was elected its commander.
Wounded in the hand during November 1936, he returned to France, after
having sent out many letters describing the situation of the Spanish
anarchist movement.
After his wound was healed, he took part in many rallies organised by
the Union Anarchiste on Spain. Immediately after this tour, he
participated at a meeting organised by revolutionaries in Paris to
protest against the banning of the “Etoile Nord Africaine” (“North
African Star”) newspaper edited by Messali Hadj and against the
repression of demonstrations in Tunisia, which had resulted in 16 dead.
Again arrested for “provocation of the military” he was condemned to 18
months in prison in December 1938.
At the start of the Second World War, he was arrested again and put in a
concentration camp at Riom. His large library was broken up after a
raid. He escaped from there, forged false papers and went underground
during the Occupation.
From 1944 he worked with others for the reconstruction of the anarchist
movement. With the Liberation [veteran anarchist militia of the Spanish
Revolution were the first troops to liberate Paris], he set up the
Aulnay-sous-bois group again, and tried to reform the Committee of
Algerian Anarchists. In “Le Libertaire”, weekly paper of the Federation
Anarchiste [the descendant of the Union Anarchiste], he wrote a column
on the situation in Algeria. He produced a series of articles on the
“Calvary of the Indigenous Algerians”.
He died in April 1953. George Fontenis delivered an address in his
honour in the name of the anarchist movement at his funeral on 30 April
1953.