Less than a month before the contested legislative elections of June 12, the police services arrested hundreds of demonstrators from Hirak, the protest movement that has shaken Algeria for more than two years. At least forty-six people, in six wilayas (prefectures), were placed under arrest warrant during the weekend, indicates the National Committee for the Release of Detainees (CNLD), an organization that lists the number of detainees in opinion.
At the 117e Hirak march, Friday May 14, the police proceeded to arrests on Didouche-Mourad Street, epicenter of the protest in Algiers, as well as in the popular district of Bab-El-Oued, from where a large procession usually leaves bound for the city center. Groups of demonstrators were caught there and then brutalized by the police.
Journalists and photographers were arrested and detained in police stations for several hours, preventing them from covering the demonstration. Kenza Khatto, journalist for Radio M, a private media which regularly involves opposition figures, has been kept in police custody and will be brought before the prosecutor on Tuesday May 18th. The latter was questioned on her cover of Hirak and forced to sign a report without being able to read it, her glasses having been broken during her arrest, reports her lawyer Zoubida Assoul.
Tension increased by a notch
In recent weeks, the tension has increased a notch. Friday, May 7, the protesters had taken the police by surprise by changing the route of the march, to which the interior ministry responded by forcing the organizers of the Hirak marches to ” to declare “ prior to demonstrations with the authorities. One way to ban them, denounces several voices which recall that the protest movement has no structure or leader.
Students, lawyers, members of political parties, journalists… All have borne the brunt of this wave of repression which has provoked a wave of indignation on social networks. Mohcine Belabbas, president of the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), was also arrested on Friday while in the center of the capital before being released in the early evening.
Athman Mazouz, national secretary for communication of this opposition party, arrested while he was in his company, was questioned about the “Alleged relations between the Rally for Culture and Democracy and major foreign powers and international organizations.” (…) These are common practices of the political police that the RCD denounces “, wrote the president of the party in a statement published on his social networks.
“What are they looking for through all of this? Do they want a confrontation or is it the struggle of the clans internally? We no longer understand “, asks an RCD activist who wishes to remain anonymous.
127 prisoners of conscience across the country
Several opposition parties, which have already opted for a boycott of the legislative elections, have challenged the authorities. “The arrest of hundreds of citizens, including journalists and political leaders, enshrines and institutionalizes the criminalization and judicialization of political practice and the exercise of the profession of journalist”, said the Workers’ Party (PT, Trotskyite) in a statement.
“Continuing to give priority to the security treatment of the national crisis and the escalation would contribute to the exacerbation of tensions, reinforce the hypotheses of confrontation and fuel the voices of extremism and intolerance”, warned the Front des forces socialistes (FFS), Algeria’s oldest opposition party, one of whose figures, former deputy Ali Laskri, was arrested before being released.
It is in Sétif, in the east of the country, that we record the largest number of places of committal with the conviction, Sunday, May 16, of twenty-two demonstrators to one year in prison for “Unarmed assembly and incitement to unarmed assembly”.
In Algiers, at least eight people were detained after being sentenced to prison terms ranging from twelve to eighteen months in prison. There are currently 127 prisoners of conscience across the country, according to the site’s count. Algerian Detainees.