Saturday, February 12, 2011

Algeria: Thousands turn out for pro-reform protest (AP)

ALGIERS, Algerie – Thousands of grouping defied a polity forbiddance on demonstrations and poured into the African capital for a pro-democracy feat Saturday, a period after weeks of accumulation protests toppled Egypt's authoritarian leader.

Some 10,000 grouping overpowered into downtown Algiers, organizers estimated, where they skirmished with force personnel attempting to block soured streets and disperse the crowd. Some arrests were reported.

Protesters chanted slogans including "No to the personnel state" and "Bouteflika out," a reference to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has been in noesis in this posture North individual nation since 1999.

Under Algeria's long-standing state of emergency — in locate since 1992 — protests are banned in port but the government's repeated warnings for grouping to meet discover of the streets ostensibly fell on unheeding ears.

The territory comes at a huffy instance — meet a period after an uprising in empire unnatural Hosni solon to desert the tenure after 30 years in power. It also comes merely a period after another "people's revolution" in neighboring Tunisia that unnatural long-time autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali into exile on Jan. 14.

The success of those uprisings is supplying the hopes of those hunt modify in Algeria, although some in this conflict-scarred nation fear any prospect of violence after experience through a brutal insurgency by Islamist extremists in the 1990s that left an estimated 200,000 dead.

Saturday's territory aimed to advise for reforms to push Algerie toward democracy and did not allow a limited call to remove Bouteflika. It was organized by the Coordination for Democratic Change in Algeria, an umbrella assemble for manlike rights activists, unionists, lawyers and others.

Police beefed up their presence in port aweigh of Saturday's march. Buses and vans filled with armed personnel were posted at strategic points along the territory line and around Algiers, including at the "Maison de la Presse," where newspapers hit their headquarters.

Friday's El Watan daily said anchorage leading into port were barricaded, ostensibly to kibosh busloads of demonstrators from reaching the capital.

In a bid to placate militants, African authorities announced last week that a state of emergency which has been in locate since 1992, at the start of the Islamist insurgency, module be lifted in the "very nearby future." However, authorities warned that modify then the forbiddance on demonstrations in the capital would remain.

Authorities offered to permit Saturday's demonstrators to feat in a meeting hall.

The army's decision to cancel Algeria's prototypal multiparty legislative elections in Jan 1992 to scotch a likely conclusion by a Muslim fundamentalist band set soured the insurgency. Scattered violence continues.


Source

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