BOUTEFLIKA’S "AMBIGUOUS" ADDRESS FAILED TO SATISFY BERBERS DEMANDS
PARIS 30 Apr. (IPS) In his first and much awaited reaction to the ten days bloody unrests in the Berbers dominated parts of his troubled nation. Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced the formation of an independent Investigation Committee "made up of representatives from civil society" and promised to take into consideration the Berbers "identity" demands.
But Berbers spokesmen, opposition forces and secularist intellectuals immediately described Mr. Bouteflika’s statement as "ambiguous" and "unconvincing".
President Bouteflika addressed the nation as clashes between protesters and Law Enforcement Forces flared again on Monday in Tizi Ouzou and other regions of Kabylie, bringing the number of killed at more than 50 and the wounded, mostly civilians, at over 500, according to Algerian and Berber sources.
As anger mounted and anti-government demonstrations spread to the capital Algiers, analysts feared that Mr. Bouteflika’s remarks that he would pay attention to the Berbers cultural and identity problems could become a "time-bomb" giving Algerian army pretext to increase repression against minorities and other dissidents.
"The identity claims will have to be addressed within the framework of a constitutional reform to be addressed later, taking also into account Algerian Arabism and islamism context", the Algerian leader said.
Admitting that Algeria's democratic process was "incomplete", he said Kabylie, like the rest of the country, was plagued with "problems of security, unemployment and housing" but had "an added dimension which has been defined as a crisis of identity".
"This was not a speech one expects from a leader on time of crisis, but one pronounced when one has no solutions to offer but offering vague, unclear promises", a spokesman from the RCD, or Gathering for Democracy, the Berbers largest political organization commented, quoted by Radio France Internationale.
Others, including the secularist FFS, or the Front of Socialist Forces of Mr.Hocine ait Ahmad said Mr. Bouteflika was "vague", adding that what he offered was "not enough".
But some independent analysts said the address was "conciliatory", observing that he was "walking on a tightrope".
Witnesses said Tizi Ouzou, a city of 600,000 people, remained paralyzed for the third straight day as stone-throwing young rioters fought running battles with police firing tear gas.
In Bejaia, further to the east, tension eased, the official APS news agency reported. Traffic on the motorway linking Tizi Ouzou to Algiers, 55 miles away, was normal after removal of villagers' barricades.
Violence in Kabylie was triggered after a teenage student was reported dead while in police custody, fanning deep local resentment over unemployment, housing shortage and discrimination from the predominantly Muslim and Arab central Administration.
The Berbers are a non-Semitic people who have inhabited the North African coast since prehistoric times and demand recognition of their Tamazight tongue as an official language.
They are also angry at the fact that they are treated as "second class citizens".
But analysts agrees that the present unrest went beyond identity or cultural claims to include major political changes in the Constitution that make the Arabic and Islam the nation’s official language and religion.
The start of the unrest coincided with the anniversary of a state crackdown on Berbers in 1980, an episode known as the "Berber Spring."
The government says 32 people have been killed and over 600 members of the riot police injured. The Algerian press gave higher death tolls. El Watan daily reported 61 people shot dead between Friday and Sunday in Tizi Ouzou province.
In the capital, hundreds of university students protested at the downtown University of Algiers chanting slogans including "government, murderer," witnesses said. A tight police cordon stopped them leaving the campus.
Interior Minister Noureddine Zerhouni praised the security forces' "composure" in suppressing the riots and said live ammunition had only been used "as a last resort."
But hospital workers mentioned cases of victims killed at point blank range or shot in the back.
Speaking at a news conference in Tizi Ouzou late on Sunday, the Minister said young rioters, who attacked gendarmerie barracks, torched public buildings, set vehicles on fire and blocked roads, were "manipulated by infiltrated terrorists."
"These events did not happen by chance, there are people instigating divisions and separatism, we know them and they'll be unmasked in time", Mr. Bouteflika said, without elaborating.
In Paris, the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues said the Algerian authorities had reacted "in a totally disproportionate manner" to the protests.
Algeria was engulfed in a bloody civil war after the government abruptly cancelled the 1992 parliamentary elections won by the Front Islamic de Salut, or Islamic Salvation Front, that was outlawed at the same time.
More than 100,000 people, the majority of them civilians, have been killed by the islamists, fighting the military-backed governments.
However, most observers say the recent protests by the Berbers were not linked to the Islamic insurgency but mainly directed at the gendarmerie, a force seen as brutal, incompetent and corrupt. ENDS ALGERIA UNREST 30401