|
Algerian Police Clamp Down On Berber March
BEJAIA, Algeria, May 3 (News Agencies) - Members of the Berber community - enraged at police violence during riots in which up to 80 died - took to the streets again Thursday in search of justice and a better deal from those in power in Algeria.
Riot police firing tear gas dispersed youthful demonstrators in this town in the largely Berber province of Kabylie.
Young Berbers have clashed with riot police in bloody protests within the past two weeks sparked by the death of a teenager in a police cell.
Tension remained in the air. But there was no return to the lethal confrontations of the weekend.
Bejaia, normally known for a gentle free-and-easy lifestyle, lay under a thick pall of white smoke Thursday from tear gas grenades flung by police behind riot shields at youths harassing them with stones and insults.
A demonstration of solidarity by up to 15,000 in the capital Algiers passed off peacefully.
Between 10,000 and 15,000 people marched through the streets to demand an end to what they called a "police state" and show support for the Berbers.
Witnesses and press reports say between 60 and 80 people have been killed in clashes in the Kabylie region of northeast Algeria, heartland of the Berber people who make up about a third of the overall Algerian population.
Riots over the shooting of a teenager in a police cell on April 18th escalated into widespread social unrest among Berbers, who have long complained of political and cultural discrimination.
Kabylie is a hotbed of opposition against both Islamists and the military-backed secular regime in Algiers, a legacy of the National Liberation Front (FLN), which held untrammeled power for many years after independence from France in 1962.
Part of the background to the unrest is the longstanding demand by Berbers that their culture and language be given equal treatment with the Arab language.
The opposition Socialist Forces Front (FFS) called the rally in the capital.
Some protestors loudly denounced President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and his ministers as a "terrorist government" and chanted slogans in the language of the Berbers.
Riot police were deployed in force, but remained in the background.
On Wednesday, FFS leader Hocine Ait-Ahmed, based in Switzerland, had expressed fears of a bloodbath.
Demonstrators carried placards reading "No police state" and "Stop the repression" but also said "No to a fundamentalist republic", expressing their hostility to Islamic groups at war with the regime in a conflict that has claimed more than 100,000 lives.
According to the interior ministry, the violence in Kabylie towns has claimed 42 lives. Opposition parties, witnesses and press reports put the death toll at between 60 and 80. All parties say that hundreds of people have been injured.
Ahead of Thursday's march, the FFS - which has its roots in Kabylie - accused the authorities of "having knowingly transformed peaceful demonstrations into riots to justify the unjustifiable: using live bullets and preparing the ground for hardline intervention."
In Bejaia's post offices Thursday, residents hurriedly tried to collect cash to buy in before a general strike urged by the students. Prices here have almost doubled in the last few days.
"It's time to stop all this and try and find some other solution than confrontation," complained one resident, echoing a widespread sentiment among older inhabitants.
The hardcore of young radicals of Bejaia hail from the outskirts, especially the downtrodden district of Ihaddaden.
"They're mad with anger, they're afraid of nothing, they're hotheads," said one trader: "Their strength is phenomenal. They tore up lamp posts and trees as though they were onion plants."
They are also unemployed and have nothing to do but hang around the neighborhood - like their likewise unemployed parents.
Berbers' complaints include not only cultural demands, but long-standing bitterness at widespread unemployment, poor housing and wretched social conditions.
|
