‘Amazigh Spring’

16:00 Amussu - fim & conversation - Terarken
18:30 Ahmed Aassid – lecture - Terarken
20:00 Houria Aïchi – concert - M
21:00 Silya Ziani & Imetlaâ – concert - M

The Amazighs are the indigenous people of North Africa. Today – despite successive colonisations, an increased Arabisation in the Maghreb, and policies of negation and marginalisation of their identity – Amazigh communities remain and resist erasure. They are scattered over a territory that extends from the Canary Islands, over the Siwa Oasis in Egypt, to the borders of sub-Saharan Africa. Without, of course, forgetting a large diaspora living in Europe, which formed as a result of migratory fluxes, mainly from Morocco and Algeria. Since the 1960s, an Amazigh cultural movement has emerged in North Africa and the Europe diaspora. Several uprisings against the ruling powers have marked the recent history of the Amazigh regions. If identity and cultural factors can be considered as the trigger of these revolts, social and economic demands are decisive as well, since cultural marginalisation often goes hand-in-hand with economic marginalisation. Although the Amazigh language and identity have recently been recognized in Morocco and Algeria, the road to real and effective recognition and equality remains long.