The photo of Pierre Audin, all smiles and green passport in hand, dating from April 2022, has been shared many times on Algerian social networks following the announcement of his death, Sunday, May 28, 2023, from cancer. . Professor of mathematics and long-time scientific mediator at the Palais de la Découverte in Paris, he had waited 55 years to be issued his Algerian passport thanks to naturalization by presidential decree, published in the Official Journal on August 25.
It is "weird that an Algerian is naturalized as an Algerian," said Pierre Audin at the time. His mother, Josette Audin, had indeed Algerian nationality since 1963, which should have automatically allowed him to acquire it, according to the law.
The history of the family is indeed above all an Algerian history. Pierre Audin spent his life defending the memory of his father Maurice Audin, who died when he was only one month old. The anti-colonial communist activist suspected of being linked to the National Liberation Front (FLN), was kidnapped in Algiers on June 11, 1957, in the midst of the Algerian war, and assassinated by the paramilitaries of French General Jacques Massu. A responsibility that France took sixty-one years to assume. Recognition came through the voice of Emmanuel Macron. On September 13, 2018, the French President declared "in the name of the French Republic, that Maurice Audin was tortured and then executed or tortured to death by soldiers who had arrested him at his home".
From the War of Independence to the Hirak
"Pierre's life will have been devoted to the incessant fight, alongside his mother Josette, for the truth to be told about the circumstances of the disappearance of his father, Maurice Audin, mathematician and active militant of the Algerian Communist Party" recalls a press release from the association Josette and Maurice Audin.
The memory of Maurice Audin, considered a martyr of the independence cause, remains vivid in Algeria. The activist's name was given to a square in the heart of the city of Algiers, which has become the epicenter of the vast protest movement against the regime, the Hirak, which began in February 2019 to challenge President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's candidacy for a fifth term and to demand a change in the political system, largely dominated since independence by senior military officers. From the first demonstrations, young people had surrounded the ceramic portrait of Maurice Audin, created on a wall in the square, with a number of small words noted on post-its to pay tribute to his fight and to be part of the continuity of his fight for the freedom of the Algerians.
Pierre Audin returned to Algiers in May 2022, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of independence. Then on June 5, he attended the unveiling of his father's bust. A great moment of emotion in this place evocative of yesterday's fight for independence, like that for freedoms recently carried out by the Hirak, today stifled by repression.
Because the fight of Audin had nothing of a past history. Pierre Audin has distinguished himself in recent years by his positions in favor of Hirak and against repression. He had joined an international committee of support for journalist Khaled Drareni and had sent a message of great vigor to the Algerian authorities, called upon to "pull themselves together" and let the citizens express themselves.
"The most beautiful city in the world"
While Khaled Drareni was incarcerated from March 2020 to February 2021 for his live coverage of the Hirak protests, Pierre Audin often sent him letters. “These letters were often written in near-illegible handwriting. When I pointed this out to him, Pierre explained to me with humor that he was writing badly on purpose to tire the prison officials who read the letters before handing them over to me,” says Khaled Drareni, paying tribute to a a man "who remained deeply attached to his compatriots in Algeria and who supported their quest for dignity and freedoms".
This fight, Pierre Audin led it to the end of his life. "Maurice Audin was tortured and murdered because he wanted an independent, fraternal and united Algeria. Today, I am ashamed for this power which forgets its history, attacks demonstrators on Audin Square, arrests Khaled Drareni near Audin Square, in the very street where my mother parked her 4CV, a steep street , so you can start without a crank! Me, my story sticks to my guts, it's as if, once again, someone was arrested at my house, "wrote Pierre Audin who considered that" Algiers was the most beautiful city in the world ".
