POLICE IN ALGIERS FIRED AT DEMONSTRATORS
ALGIERS 14 June (IPS) At least two journalists were killed Thursday in the
Algerian capital of Algiers, run over by a bus, after anti-riot police opened
fire with real bullets and tear-gas on hundreds of thousands demonstrators at
the central First of May Place, most of them from the Kabyle minority, a
non-Arab population resenting inequalities with the Algeria’s Arab and Muslim
majority, according to eyewitnesses.
News reaching Paris from the scene, quoting hospital sources, said some 400 demonstrators were also wounded and taken to nearby hospitals, after police an d army unit stopped demonstrators to march to the Presidential Palace.
Coming from all over Algeria, but mostly from the Kabylie regions, an estimated million people had reached Algiers from early hours of morning to call on the authorities for more democracy and equality, fighting wide-ranging corruption, work for the young Algerians and housing for the deprived, regardless of race and religion.
Eyewitnesses contacted on the phone by Iran Press Service said police used local thugs from downtown Algiers to provoke demonstrators with anti Kabyle and pro-Bouteflika slogans, prompting Law Enforcement Forces and the army to attack the protesters, joined by many non-Kabyle Algerians, mostly intellectuals and forces opposed to the military-backed regime.
They said clashes started before noon, with thugs profiting from the confusion to destroy shops windows and looting, without being opposed by the security and police forces.
But the Interior Ministry denied reports that the Law Enforcement Forces had used tear gas and live ammunition against demonstrators.
The aim of the demonstration, at witch organisers were expecting some two millions to participate, was to protest against police and Gendarmerie repression in Kabylie, the scene of violent demonstrations in the past months, after a young student, who had tried to save a woman assaulted by Algerian soldiers, was arrested and found dead in a Gendarmerie outpost.
Since then, hundreds have been wounded in almost daily clashes across the Kabylie regions with police, army and Gendarmerie forces.
Hundreds of thousands demonstrators, most of them young Kabyles, bare chests, with the letter "Z", meaning their traditional language Tamazight painted on their back, wearing black flags in sign of mourning or posters of Matloub Lounes, a famous Kabyle singer shot dead almost three years ago in his native Kabylie, tried to march to the Presidential Palace, but were by police.
Authorities shut the nation’s international airport and the capital looked like a battlefield at nightfall, with police, security forces and army in full control of the city.
According to many French and Algerian analysts, the demonstrations proved the failure of President Abdel’aziz Bouteflika to meet the legitimate demands of the Kabyls, that make between 25 to 30 per cent of the Algerian population.
The generalisation of unrest to outside Kabylie territory confirms that the malaise of Algerians, mostly the young population, is general and widespread and not limited to the Kabyle’s traditional cultural and identity demands, as the authorities say.
"Un umbilical cordon, made of a series of shortages, unemployment, lack of housing, of money, widespread corruption and above all, of a bleak future now unites all the dissidents", wrote the French-language daily "Liberté" (Liberty), adding that the Kabyle contestation weakens the thesis of the authorities that claim the frecent events in Kabylie are the work of an ethnic minority.
Commenting on the troubles, Mrs. Azadeh Kian of the French Centre Nationale de Recherches Scientifiques (CNRS) observed that the recent unrests have their roots in the efforts deployed by Algerian leaders to Arabise by force the whole nation and it’s system, including the education, the administration etc. that was based on French, measures that antagonised the Kabyles, a non Arab ethny that has its own language and culture.
Though these demands were taken into account and put into the Constitution in 1996, so far, nothing has changed, she observed.
In her view, to the Kabyles cultural demands are added other reclamations, including an unemployment that runs at over 40 per cent and touching mostly the youth, lack of democracy and a generalised cultural, social, economic and political dissatisfaction among the population.
"What’s more dangerous at this stage is that this time, the threat do not come from the Islamist fundamentalists, but a population that has legitimate demands that, if the government can not deliver, one would have to fear for more unrest", Mrs. Kian added. ENDS ALGERIA UNREST 14601