Thousands of auxiliary police marched in Algiers on Monday to demand pay raises, breaking through heavy security to reach parliament in a rare mass show of dissent in the tightly controlled country.
The policemen, estimated by organizers to number around 20,000 and by reporters to be 10,000, braved a ban on demonstrations in the Algerian capital and pushed through several security cordons to reach the National Assembly.
They were quickly surrounded by regular police dispatched to the scene of the protest.
The men, many of them in uniform, demanded Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika bring their salaries and conditions in line with those of other security services, retroactive to 2008, chanting: “Bouteflika is the solution.”
The protesters dispersed peacefully after agreeing to the establishment of a commission that would look into the corps’ demands, a negotiator said after talks with Algerian Interior Minister Dahou Ould Kablia.
The commission will comprise three representatives of the auxiliary police, one from the interior ministry and one each from the police and gendarmerie, he said.
Algeria’s auxiliary police, numbering about 94,000 men, operate in the country’s villages as part of a program set up in 1994 when the government was battling Islamist rebel groups.
“We only have the right to 21 days of leave a year. We take part in security sweeps without helmets or bullet-proof jackets,” one protester said.
According to the demonstrators, about 4,400 auxiliary policemen have been killed since 1994 in violence involving armed Islamists.
Emboldened by popular uprisings sweeping the Arab world, Algeria’s opposition has attempted to stage several anti-Bouteflika protests in the capital, in defiance of the ban on demonstrating in the city, but have been thwarted.
On Saturday the latest attempt to protest against Bouteflika, who has been in power since 1999, was foiled when police surrounded protesters and counter-demonstrators chanted “Bouteflika is not Mubarak.”
In a bid to appease simmering public anger, Bouteflika, 73, promised last month to place the fight against corruption at the heart of government action.
Bouteflika also promised a raft of reforms meant to boost the economy, employment and housing.
He also lifted martial law for the first time in 19 years.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the