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Algerian President Promises Punishment For Berber Riots
ALGIERS, Algeria, May 28 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika on Sunday pledged that anyone found to be behind the current disturbances among ethnic Berbers would be seriously punished, news agencies reported.
Bouteflika said punishments would be determined when an independent commission published a report on the unrest, so that all legal measures could be taken against those who, as he put it, "ignited the fire of sedition and created division" in Algeria.
Algerian independent newspapers and opposition parties criticized the commission as a delaying tactic that would worsen the situation in strife-torn Algeria.
Many Algerians believe that army generals stirred the riots to divert attention from infighting within the country's military leadership and accusations of human rights abuses.
Bouteflika left many questions unanswered, including whether the government was considering putting the region under direct military rule, CNN reported.
Meanwhile, more violent clashes were on Saturday between ethnic Berbers demanding recognition of their cultural rights and paramilitary police in towns in the Kabylie region of northeastern Algeria.
Bouteflika has ignored the Berber protesters' central demands, as he pulled paramilitary gendarmes out of the Berber-speaking region.
Kabylie region, which includes Bejaia and Tizi Ouzou provinces, has been convulsed by sporadic clashes and street protests since the death of a teenager in custody at gendarmerie barracks on April 18th.
Analysts said on Sunday the gendarme withdrawal demand has presented Bouteflika with a dilemma.
"Withdrawing the gendarmes from Kabylie means that there will be no state presence there and that possibility would throw the region into chaos that will only benefit rebel guerrillas and the mafia," said analyst Mounir Boujemaa.
The government admitted that security forces killed 42 people and said about 600 were injured in late April and early this month in riots prompted by the teenager's death, reported africast news agency online.
Protesters blame the gendarmes for widespread corruption as well as the killings. More than half a million people took to the streets of Tizi Ouzou, the main Berber city, last week to demand their withdrawal.
In Bejaia, a peaceful street march by school students turned into street battles when police intervened to disperse the demonstrators.
Demonstrators tore down electricity pylons to erect barricades and police moved in with tear gas. But the protesters regrouped in the city's narrow sloping streets to throw stones at the police, the witnesses said.
A similar massive street protest is planned in Algiers for Thursday.
Algeria has been beset by violence since early 1992 when the authorities cancelled a general election in which Islamists had taken a commanding lead.
More than 100,000 people, many of them civilian victims of gruesome massacres, have been killed since then in the civil strife pitting Islamists against government forces.
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