Algerian police quash nascent pro-democracy movement (2nd Roundup)

By Houria Ait Kaci and Clare Byrne Feb 12, 2011, 15:50 GMT

Algiers/Paris - Algerian police on Saturday cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrators in the capital Algiers and other cities, in a show of force aimed at discouraging a revolt that contradicted the government's recent promises to allow more protests.

In Algiers, an estimated 2,000 demonstrators gathered on the central May 1 square for an unauthorized march through the city to protest the government of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

But they quickly found themselves hemmed in by a huge contingent of riot police, who baton-charged protesters, barred all routes out of the square and made dozens of arrests, forcing the organizers to eventually call it off.

'It's a peaceful march. We won't use force to march,' Mustapha Bouchachi, president of the League for the Defense of Human Rights and spokesman for the Coordination for Change and Democracy - the coalition of opposition parties, trade unions and human rights groups behind the protests - told reporters.

Demonstrators also tried to march in the second-largest city of Oran in the west, Annaba in the east and the coastal city of Bejaia, among others, but in each case were barred by police, Bouchachi said.

Those marches were banned despite the government saying recently that protests in all cities bar Algiers were allowed.

Bouchachi listed the protesters' demands as being 'the immediate and effective lifting of the state of emergency (in place for 19 years), democratic reform and a change of regime, not a change within the regime.'

Some youths in Algiers directed their frustration directly at the president of 11 years.

'Bouteflika goodbye,' 'Bouteflika, leave,' a group of young men waving the Algerian flag shouted.

An elderly woman who attended the demonstration with her husband told the German Press Agency dpa that she had 'come to demonstrate for the Algerian people, for my country.'

'I have no demands for myself - I am retired, my children are grown-up and live abroad - but we want the best for our country, which has plenty of resources,' she said.

But the protest was easily quashed by riot police, who had been deployed in the thousands across the city in vans and armoured trucks on the eve of the protest.

The League for the Defense of Human Rights said police had arrested some 200 people, including a number of opposition politicians, in Algiers and several more in other cities.

The protests came one day after mass demonstrations forced Egyptian president Hosny Mubarak to step down after 30 years in power, and one month after demonstrators across the border in Tunisia toppled their longtime leader, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

The tumult in those countries has rattled the government in Algeria, where many people fear that large-scale protests could plunge the country back into bloodshed.

In the 1990s, the state fought a war against Islamist extremists that left more than 100,000 people dead.

The violence abated after Bouteflika announced an amnesty for the rebels in 1999. But in recent years, extremist groups claiming links to al-Qaeda have mounted attacks on the military, the United Nations and other targets.

Said Sadi, the leader of the country's second-largest opposition party, the Rally for Culture and Democracy, had told dpa earlier in the week that violence was inevitable unless people were allowed to protest.

Algeria, a vast desert country that is rich in oil and gas but most of whose 35 million people live in poverty, experienced several days of rioting in January over food prices and unemployment, in which at least three people were killed.

Several people have also killed themselves in recent weeks by setting themselves on fire.

To defuse the tensions, Bouteflika said last week that the state of emergency, which he maintains was used to fight Islamists and not keep the population in check, would be lifted 'in the very near future.'

He also announced other reforms, including food price cuts that the opposition described as piecemeal.

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