Algerian regime mouthpiece unveils racist face after failed African Cup of Nations Bid
“Sorry Africa, our stadiums are better off without your odors,” this was the reaction of the Algerian regime’s media after their country lost its bid to host the 2025 African Cup of Nations.
Echourouk published the racist comment right after the executive body of the African football (CAF) voted for Morocco as a host of the 2025 continental championship.
Algeria said on the eve of the vote it was withdrawing to spare itself another diplomatic blow. The decision however was rejected by CAF and perceived as a bad loser act.
Echourouk’s racist comment and the ensuing diatribes against Morocco and Africans by Algerian commentators vindicate the voters decision to opt for Morocco!
Algeria’s failure to host a much-needed tournament to distract its own people from a dire social and economic reality came on top of a series of failures at the diplomatic and sports levels.
Algeria’s bid to join the BRICS was sidelined, in a scandalous defeat that was reproduced when Algeria’s football federation chief failed to make it to the CAF executive body!
Echourouk’s abject comments are but the tip of the iceberg of rampant racism espoused by the state itself.
Even the officials or bodies in charge of human rights openly express racist stances. In 2016, head of Algeria’s human rights commission Farouk Ksentini bluntly accused sub-Saharans of spreading HIV in Algeria, in a public statement that bears the hallmarks of racism in its abhorrent forms.
“We Algerians are exposed to the risk of HIV contamination and other sexually transmitted diseases because of these migrants,” he shamefully said.
In 2018, the country that sought to host a continental event took a segregationist move to ban migrants from using taxis and buses in a wave of anti-migrant drive launched by the Algerian authorities in blatant disregard for human dignity and in total violation of basic human rights.
Then Algerian PM, Ahmed Ouyahya, surfed on the tide of anti-migrant populism uttering heinous remarks when he described Sub-Saharan migrants as a “source of crime, drugs and other calamities.”
Persisting on the same xenophobic remarks, then Foreign Minister Abdelkader Messahel accused Sub-Saharan migrants of “involvement in crime and drug trafficking.”
Meanwhile, in total media blackout, Algeria continues to forcibly expel migrants into its borders with Niger and Mali where thousands of Sub-Saharans are abandoned in harsh living conditions triggering condemnations from rights groups.
