FERHAT ABBAS (1899-1985) Autograph letter signed Alger, April 16, 1985

1 page and 1/4 in8 on one sheet. In French. «... I apologise for being very late in replying... I am ill. I do not have «The Manifesto of the Algerian People» at hand. But I have just written a book published by Flammarion and entitled «L’indépendance confisquée». It is from this book that I extract a sentence for you: «The right to speak is as precious as the right to bread. Freedom of expression and the right to criticism are synonymous with life.»… Ferhat Abbas, Algerian nationalist leader and statesman. Founder of the Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto (UDMA), allied with the National Liberation Front (FLN) during the war of independence, President of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA) from 1958 to 1961, he was elected President of the National Constituent Assembly after independence, thus becoming the first Head of State of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria. In 1943, he published «Le Manifeste du Peuple Algérien», which called for a new status for the «Algerian nation» with the signatures of 28 elected Muslims. The manifesto condemned colonisation and demanded the right of the Algerian people to self-determination. In «L’indépendance confisquée», a book published in 1984, an indictment of Ahmed Ben Bella and Houari Boumediene, he explains by «which tortuous path» his country came to live under «a totalitarian regime of the Stalinist type». «This book does not claim to be a testimony for history. It is a political appeal, a hymn to freedom and democracy, launching his message for those Algerians who, he says, «will one day take to the streets to demand their freedom and their bread».