The 19-year-old state of emergency in Algeria will end within days, Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci said yesterday, brushing off concerns that recent protests in the country could escalate.
A state of emergency has been in force in Algeria since 1992 and the government has come under pressure from opponents, inspired by uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, to ditch emergency laws.
“In the coming days, we will talk about [the state of emergency] as if it was a thing of the past,” Medelci told the French radio station Europe 1 in an interview. “That means that in Algeria we will have a return to a state of law that allows complete freedom of expression, within the limits of the law.”
Recent protests had been organized by minority groups with limited support, the minister said, adding that there was no risk of the government being overthrown as in Tunisia.
However, he suggested the government may be willing to make concessions, saying: “The decision to change the government lies with the president, who will assess the possibility as he has done in the past, to make adjustments, as he has done in the past.”
“Algeria is not Tunisia or Egypt,” he said.
However, the National Coordination for Change and Democracy (CNCD), a coalition of opposition parties, rights groups and unofficial unions, on Sunday announced a new march scheduled for Friday in the capital, despite a longstanding ban on demonstrations.
It will start from May 1 Square, where a demonstration took place on Saturday, said lawyer Moustepha Bouchachi, president of the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights, which is part of the CNCD.
On Saturday, nearly 30,000 police prevented about 2,000 protesters marching the 4km from May 1 Square to Martyrs Square.
The security forces made 14 arrests — 300 according to the opposition.
That did not stop another demonstration in Annaba on Sunday, where four police officers were slightly injured during clashes with young protesters outside the local government headquarters.
On Sunday, CNDC spokesman Khalil Moumene condemned what he said was the brutality of the security forces and the arrest of opposition activists the previous day.
“People braved the ban to come and demonstrate peacefully,” and those arrested had been held several hours before being released, he said.
The US and Germany both appealed to the Algerian authorities on Sunday not to over-react.
Public demonstrations have been banned in Algeria under a state of emergency put in place in 1992, but are allowed on a case-by-case basis outside the capital.
The CNCD wants the immediate end of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s regime, citing high unemployment and soaring costs.
The grievances triggered riots in early January that left five dead and more than 800 injured. A protest in Algiers on Jan. 22 left many injured as police blocked a march on parliament.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
RSS