Selepas Tunisia, Mesir, - Algeria pula bergelora

Selepas Tunisia, Mesir, - Algeria pula bergelora

Feb 14, 11 10:18am

Beribu-ribu penunjuk perasaan menuntut Presiden Algeria, Abdelaziz Bouteflika meletakkan jawatan semakin merebak ke bandar Annaba di sebelah timur Algeria.

Menurut Penyelarasan Nasional Perubahan dan Demokrasi (CNCD) dan kesatuan pekerja tidak rasmi, Mustepha Bouchahi, tunjuk perasaan antikerajaan seterusnya akan diadakan Sabtu ini.

Pengumuman tersebut dibuat sehari selepas 2,000 penunjuk perasaan bertempur dengan 30,000 anggota polis di bandar Algiers.

Ratusan penunjuk perasaan juga dilaporkan membaling batu ke arah polis di Bandaraya Annaba di timur Algeria dengan pembangkang mengumumkan untuk mengadakan satu lagi tunjuk perasaan besar-besaran minggu depan.

Sementara itu, Washington meminta pihak keselamatan Algeria supaya bertindak lebih berhati-hati selepas sehari protes seluruh negara terhadap kerajaan pimpinan Presiden Abdelaziz Bouteflika yang menyaksikan puluhan orang awam dan wartawan ditangkap.

“Kami ingin menegaskan sokongan kami kepada hak setiap rakyat Algeria termasuk mengadakan perhimpunan dan menyuarakan pendapat," kata jurucakap Jabatan Negara Amerika, Philip Crowley dalam satu kenyataan.

Tunjuk perasaan yang akan datang dijadual diadakan 19 Februari ini, kata Mustepha Bouchahi dari Penyelaras Kebangsaan Bagi Demokrasi dan Perubahan (CNCD), iaitu kumpulan yang bergabung dalam perti pembangkang.

Semalam, dianggarkan 2,000 penunjuk perasaan bertembung dengan lebih 30,000 anggota polis yang bertindak menghalang mereka mengadakan demonstrasi jalanan di ibu negara itu.

Tunjuk perasaan juga diadakan di seluruh bandar di Algeria bagi menyatakan hasrat sama seperti berlaku di Mesir dan negara jiran, Tunisia.

- AFP

http://malaysiakini.com/news/155954

After Egypt, next stop Algeria?

France 24

ALGIERS, Feb 14: Braving a massive police presence, thousands of anti-government protesters took to the streets of the Algerian capital of Algiers Saturday, defying an official ban on demonstrations and briefly forcing through a police cordon in the centre of the city.

Reporting from Algiers, FRANCE 24’s Tahar Hani said protesters had gathered at May 1 Square chanting, “Free and democratic Algeria”.

Saturday’s protests came a day after Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak stepped down from office, thereby reinvigorating the long-planned for demonstration in Algiers.

Protesters held signs saying, “After Mubarak, it will be Bouteflika,” referring to the 74-year-old Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has been in office since 1999.
Skirmishes broke out between riot police preventing protesters from reaching central Algiers, reported FRANCE 24's Hani.

While police said about 800 protesters had taken to the streets, journalists and opposition members put the figure at 2,000.

Police presence turns Algiers into a ‘city of blue’

Security was tight ahead of the protests with police blocking access to the capital.

“Hassiba Ben Bouali Street, the main road leading to May 1 Square, is virtually under siege by policemen equipped with riot shields and batons,” said Hani. “Access to Algiers has been blocked with a heavy police presence on the roads linking the city with the rest of Algeria. Train services between central Algiers and the eastern and western suburbs have been cancelled.”

The Algerian capital famed for its luminous white walls had turned into a city of blue, said Hani, referring to the massive police presence. Opposition groups say 35,000 police officials had been deployed, including reinforcements that arrived from other parts of the country.

Saturday’s march was organised by an umbrella group of human rights activists, trade unionists, lawyers and political parties, including the opposition Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD) party.

Four senior RCD officials were arrested Saturday morning along with about 60 other members, according to RCD spokesman Mohsen Belabas.

Reporting from Algiers earlier Saturday, Hani said the RCD headquarters on the main Didouche Mourad Street had been “surrounded by police”.

The impressive police presence succeeded in intimidating some residents. Yacine, a 25-year-old Algiers resident, told FRANCE 24 that he woke up early to get his supplies of bread and milk in case things go wrong during the day.

Seeking a 'rupture' and 'genuine democracy'

In an interview with FRANCE 24 earlier this week, Fodil Boumala, a writer and member of the CNCD (National Coordination for Change and Democracy) the umbrella group organising Saturday’s demonstration, said the purpose of the march was to achieve “a rupture, the departure of the current government and the establishment of genuine democracy”.

Boumala was one of the many opposition activists arrested on Saturday.

Demonstrations have been banned in Algeria because of a state of emergency that has been in place since 1992 when the military cancelled free elections, sparking Algeria’s descent into a brutal civil war.

Last week, President Bouteflika announced that he would lift the state of emergency “in the very near future”, following a spate of copycat suicide attempts mimicking that of the 26-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation in protest at unemployment sparked the Tunisian uprising that led to the overthrow of the president. Bouteflika has also promised to allow more democratic freedoms and generate more jobs.

But organisers of Saturday’s march have dismissed the president’s promises, demanding an actual end to the state of emergency and calling for Bouteflika himself to step down.

http://en.harakahdaily.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2271:after-egypt-next-stop-algeria&catid=37:world&Itemid=59

Algeria: Thousands turn out for pro-reform protest

– 44 mins ago

ALGIERS, Algeria – Thousands of people defied a government ban on demonstrations and poured into the Algerian capital for a pro-democracy rally Saturday, a day after weeks of mass protests toppled Egypt's authoritarian leader.

Some 10,000 people flooded into downtown Algiers, organizers estimated, where they skirmished with riot police attempting to block off streets and disperse the crowd. Some arrests were reported.

Protesters chanted slogans including "No to the police state" and "Bouteflika out," a reference to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has been in power in this sprawling North African nation since 1999.

Under Algeria's long-standing state of emergency — in place since 1992 — protests are banned in Algiers but the government's repeated warnings for people to stay out of the streets apparently fell on deaf ears.

The march comes at a sensitive time — just a day after an uprising in Egypt forced Hosni Mubarak to abandon the presidency after 30 years in power. It also comes merely a month after another "people's revolution" in neighboring Tunisia that forced long-time autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali into exile on Jan. 14.

The success of those uprisings is fueling the hopes of those seeking change in Algeria, although many in this conflict-scarred nation fear any prospect of violence after living through a brutal insurgency by Islamist extremists in the 1990s that left an estimated 200,000 dead.

Saturday's march aimed to press for reforms to push Algeria toward democracy and did not include a specific call to oust Bouteflika. It was organized by the Coordination for Democratic Change in Algeria, an umbrella group for human rights activists, unionists, lawyers and others.

Police beefed up their presence in Algiers ahead of Saturday's march. Buses and vans filled with armed police were posted at strategic points along the march route and around Algiers, including at the "Maison de la Presse," where newspapers have their headquarters.

Friday's El Watan daily said roads leading into Algiers were barricaded, apparently to stop busloads of demonstrators from reaching the capital.

In a bid to placate militants, Algerian authorities announced last week that a state of emergency which has been in place since 1992, at the start of the Islamist insurgency, will be lifted in the "very near future." However, authorities warned that even then the ban on demonstrations in the capital would remain.

Authorities offered to let Saturday's demonstrators to rally in a meeting hall.

The army's decision to cancel Algeria's first multiparty legislative elections in January 1992 to thwart a likely victory by a Muslim fundamentalist party set off the insurgency. Scattered violence continues.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110212/ap_on_re_af/af_algeria_protest