Last month a friend of mine told me that he was collecting money to a
family of ten who live in total poverty in the city of Tiaret. They
have 8 children and 3 of them became handicapped after reaching the
age fourteen and fifteen. Their own family has left them and only
strangers are trying to help them with anything they can do. I gave
him $200 and within few days the family received about $700 via
western union. This week my friend spoke with the family for the first
time and the father explained to him how He end up in this situation.
He used to have a land and farm. He didn't need the help of anybody.
But in 1994 he was forced by the Algerian army to leave his land
because they were accused of helping armed groups in the mountains. He
was not the only one. Thousand were forced to leave and their houses
were destroyed. His only fault was just because his land was located
close to a hot spot. The government's plan was to isolate armed groups
in the mountains so they don't get any supplies from farmers and
innocents people paid. The people who didn't leave were simply
destroyed and disappeared from the map. They end up living in the
cities in total poverties, homeless & jobless. The government did
nothing to help them and now many of them are asked to move to other
locations out of the big cities.
Seven hundred dollars is not lot of money but for this family without
any income it's a miracle. They told Mohamed that they have only God
and him to help them. There is no doubt that this family was starving
and the people who know them can confirm it.
My conclusion to this story is Algerian journalists are not doing
their job to cover deep Algeria. What we are reading in Algerian
newspapers is not covering 1% of Algeria.
There is no journalism in Algeria.
