Mass protests rock Algeria
By G.
Dunkel
The Algerian masses, both Berbers and Arabs, came out June
14 in a huge anti-government demonstration--estimates ranged
from 400,000 to 2 million. They marched on the National
Palace in Algiers until beaten back by water cannons, tear
gas and police clubs.
They came in trucks, cars and buses by the hundreds of
thousands. A group of youth even marched over 120 miles on
foot from Amizour. They came at the call of representatives
of the Berber regions of Béjaïa, Sétif,
Bordj Bou-Arréridj, Tizi Ouzou, Boumerdès and
Bouira as well as the coordinating committees of the
universities of Algiers.
They called for solutions to Algeria's urgent social and
economic problems: jobs for the 80 percent of the youth who
are unemployed, housing, clean drinking water and roads. They
demanded that the cops come under "the effective authority of
democratically elected bodies" and that the military police
be immediately withdrawn from all Berber areas. Another major
demand was that Tamazight, the Berber language, be
constitutionally recognized as an official, national
language.
Ever since a rebellion broke out in mid-April, after a
high school student was beaten to death in a police barracks
for protesting the banning of a Berber poetry reading, the
Algerian government has attempted to discredit the
movement.
The government said the Berbers were attempting to divide
the country. The protesters, they claimed, were doing the
work of the Islamic fundamentalists, who waged a civil war
costing 100,000 lives from 1991 until it collapsed last
year.
The government's position has some gaping holes. Some of
the Islamic fundamentalist parties, which spent a decade
opposing the government, have now joined it as a result of a
peace deal.
The Berbers, many of whom carry Algerian flags in their
protests, have made it clear that the recognition of their
language and cultural rights would not divide but unite
Algeria by removing a major "source of frustration."
Arabic-speaking communities in the eastern part of Algeria
exploded after June 14. Thousands of youths in the
working-class sections of Annaba, a major port, poured out
into the streets, enraged by television coverage of the
Algiers march. They set up street barricades, threw anything
they could get their hands on at the cops, and chanted, "We
want drinkable water, electricity, roads" and "Long live
democracy, we want an Algeria run by civilians, not by
generals." Other cities also saw major protests.
All the Algerian press agree that most of the country,
Arabic- and Berber-speaking alike, is ready to explode.
Tensions are at a breaking point. The government, which is
basically controlled by the army, can either back down or
order the army to drown the protests in blood.
But will the soldiers fire on their brothers and cousins,
fathers and uncles, sisters and mothers?
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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