Protesters in Algeria demonstrated for democracy and freedom last weekend in a pattern of demonstrations that is far from having come to an end, writes Sherine Bahaa Algerians are not very much different from their Tunisian or Egyptian counterparts, having the same grievances of rising prices, unemployment and corruption and identical demands in the shape of democracy and freedom. Protests in Algeria have focused on May 1 Square in the centre of the capital Algiers, and the spark for them has come in the shape of a Facebook group calling itself Coordination for Democratic Change (CDC). According to Ali Yehia Abdel-Nour, director of a human rights group and a senior CDC leader, in an interview with Gulf News, protesters intend to take to the streets of Algiers every Saturday until the regime falls. Abdel-Nour, a minister in the government after the country's independence from France in 1962, said 18 groups working under the umbrella of the CDC were confident of the support of thousands of young men and women wanting change. Meanwhile, protesters in Algeria have copied tactics used abroad, including self-immolation. Some dozen Algerians have set themselves on fire since January, three of whom have died, in an apparent imitation of the act of Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation sparked nationwide protests and forced Tunisian president Zein Al-Abidine bin Ali to flee the country. However, thus far the protests in Algeria have been largely ineffective, though the government did promise to lift the country's 19-year-old emergency law last week, even if this is expected to be only partial. "In the coming days," Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci said, "the emergency regulations will be a thing of the past," giving way to "complete freedom of expression within the limits of the law." He echoed words used by Egypt's former foreign minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit, who said of the possibility of Tunisian protests spreading to Egypt that "Egypt is not Tunisia". "Algeria is not Tunisia or Egypt," Medelci said. However, when 2,000 demonstrators gathered last Saturday in what was dubbed as Algeria's "Day of Rage", they chanted slogans heard in Egypt's Tahrir Square, such as "the people want a change of the regime." The protesters also carried Egyptian and Tunisian flags, and they also held banners bearing the words Bouteflika dégage (Bouteflika go). Despite the suppression of the protests by the Algerian security forces, there have been calls for the protests to continue every Saturday until Algerian President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika is forced from office. Bouteflika has ruled Algeria with a tough hand since 1999, maintaining power through elections that opposition figures say have been rigged. The demonstrations have also spilled over to other cities around the country, with protests breaking out on Monday in Akbou some 110 miles east of Algiers. While demonstrators rallied to protest against high food prices and unemployment, the country's security forces sought to prevent a replay of events in Tunisia and Egypt. One activist, Rida Bourda, told the BBC's Arabic Service that the demonstrators had been met with unreasonable force. "Young people went out to protest, but the only answer they got from the authorities was the police," he said. "The police started beating them and used tear gas. But all these young people want is democracy and greater freedom." Witnesses said that thousands of riot police officers bearing clubs had blocked the demonstrators from carrying out a planned march in the centre of Algiers, which was otherwise tense and deserted at the weekend. By late afternoon on Saturday, with the last of the demonstrators gone, May 1 Square was still sealed off by police officers, with dozens of armoured police vehicles remaining in the neighbourhood. By the end of the day, at least 500 people had been arrested in Algiers and hundreds more in the cities of Annaba, Constantine and Oran. Algerian officials attempted to minimise the significance of the demonstrations, but one of the organisers, Said Sadi of the opposition Rally for Culture and Democracy, said that Saturday's event was a "great success" and that it would not be the last. "When you have to mobilise 30,000 police in the capital to fight protesters, that's a sign of weakness, not of strength," he said.
