Black Spring (Algeria)

The Black Spring (Kabyle: Tafsut Taberkant) was a series of protests and political demonstrations by Kabyle activists in the Kabylie region of Algeria in 2001, which were met by repressive and violent police measures and became a potent symbol of Kabyle discontent with the national government. The protests took place against a backdrop of long-standing cultural marginalization of the Highlander Kabyle, a homogeneous Berber linguistic group in Algeria (Berber speakers form some 25%–35% of the total population, although exact numbers are disputed) despite the most rigid government-sponsored Arabization measures of the 1960s through the 1980s having been lifted. The name "Black Spring" alludes to the events known as the Berber Spring of the 1980s, in which mainly Kabyle civil society activists challenged the ban on Berber culture then in place, demanding cultural rights and democracy.