 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.In 2001, a young Kabyle student, Guermah Massinissa, was arrested by Algerian gendarmes and later died inside the gendarmerie.This provoked large-scale riots in the Kabyle region, that lasted for months.