Algeria Cracks down on Activists in Bid to Break Protest Movement

Demonstrators chant slogans during a protest demanding the removal of the ruling elite in Algiers, Algeria July 19, 2019. (Reuters)
Demonstrators chant slogans during a protest demanding the removal of the ruling elite in Algiers, Algeria July 19, 2019. (Reuters)
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Algeria Cracks down on Activists in Bid to Break Protest Movement

Demonstrators chant slogans during a protest demanding the removal of the ruling elite in Algiers, Algeria July 19, 2019. (Reuters)
Demonstrators chant slogans during a protest demanding the removal of the ruling elite in Algiers, Algeria July 19, 2019. (Reuters)

Algeria has intensified a crackdown on an anti-government protest movement, targeting social media users in a bid to stop demonstrations resuming once coronavirus restrictions end.

Weekly protests rocked the North African country for more than a year and only stopped in March due to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The "Hirak" protest movement caused the downfall of former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika in April 2019 after 20 years in power. It has continued demanding an overhaul of Algeria's governance system, in place since independence from France in 1962.

Authorities have made about 200 arrests linked to the protests since the country's coronavirus restrictions came into effect three months ago, according to Said Salhi, vice president of the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights.

"The authorities have taken advantage of the lull to arrest the maximum number of activists," he said.

Protesters are being pursued for "crimes of opinion and expression connected to posts on social media, particularly Facebook", he said, with some of their homes searched and mobile phones confiscated.

Most of the authorities' actions are based on changes to the penal code that were passed in April amid the health crisis and have been denounced by human rights activists.

'Muzzling the media'

Salhi called the moves "an irresponsible attack, verging on provocation, against fundamental human rights".

On Thursday, more than 20 opposition activists were summoned to appear in seven separate hearings, mostly in trials that had been delayed due to the pandemic.

Those accused include figures in the protest movement, political activists, journalists and people accused of mocking the regime online.

"The government doesn't believe in change, it refuses to listen to the people," lawyer Mustapha Bouchachi was quoted as saying this week in French-language daily Liberte.

"In my opinion, it is making these arrests to break the Hirak," he added.

According to detainees' rights association CNLD, 60 prisoners of conscience are currently jailed.

In a sign the government might be nervous about the public mood, several academics rushed to its defense in official media this week, accusing a "neo-Hirak" of being "in the service of a foreign plan".

But press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called on the Algerian authorities to "stop using the justice system to muzzle the media".

"The increase in legal proceedings against Algerian journalists is extremely worrying and indicates a blatant deterioration of press freedom in Algeria," RSF director for North Africa, Souhaieb Khayati, said in a statement.

Four Algerian journalists were prosecuted or sentenced to prison this week.

Opposite impact?

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has also urged Algerian authorities to "stop using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to clamp down on press freedom".

Some of Algeria's coronavirus lockdown measures have been gradually lifted since June 7.

But gatherings, including the weekly Hirak marches, are still strictly forbidden.

Algeria has officially reported 11,385 cases and 811 deaths from the COVID-19 illness.

Provincial areas have seen sporadic mobilizations in support of detainees in recent weeks, particularly in the northeastern Kabylie region, while Algiers has remained quiet.

Defying the restrictions, protesters across the country rallied on Friday to call for the government to step down, according to NGOs and videos shared online.

The CNLD reported about a dozen arrests were made in Kabylie's Bejaia and several more in the region's other main cities of Tizi Ouzou and Bouira.

Small numbers of protesters have also been arrested elsewhere across the country, including in the northwestern city of Oran, according to the CNLD.

An anti-government coalition within the Pact for the Democratic Alternative has urged Algerians to "stay mobilized but vigilant in order to engage forcefully in the resumption of peaceful protests" when the health situation allows.

And although there were calls on social media to restart weekly protests on Friday, activists, lawyers, student associations and political parties warned of the health risks.

But instead of crushing the unprecedented, leaderless protest movement, the crackdown could have the opposite effect.

"There is a general feeling of 'hogra'" prevailing among the population, said Salhi, using an Algerian term that refers to injustice and abuse of power.

"Some are already planning to go back to the streets" despite the coronavirus risk, he said.



Israeli Fire Kills 30 in Gaza, Medics Say, as Attention Shifts to Iran 

Palestinians carry sacks and boxes of food and humanitarian aid unloaded from a World Food Program convoy that had been heading to Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
Palestinians carry sacks and boxes of food and humanitarian aid unloaded from a World Food Program convoy that had been heading to Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
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Israeli Fire Kills 30 in Gaza, Medics Say, as Attention Shifts to Iran 

Palestinians carry sacks and boxes of food and humanitarian aid unloaded from a World Food Program convoy that had been heading to Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
Palestinians carry sacks and boxes of food and humanitarian aid unloaded from a World Food Program convoy that had been heading to Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)

Israeli gunfire and strikes killed at least 30 people across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, local health authorities said, as some Palestinians there said their plight was being forgotten as attention shifted to the air war between Israel and Iran.

The deaths included the latest in near daily killings of Palestinians seeking aid in the three weeks since Israel partially lifted a total blockade on Gaza that it had imposed for almost three months.

Medics said separate airstrikes on homes in the Maghazi refugee camp and Zeitoun neighborhood in central and northern Gaza killed at least 14 people, while five others were killed in an airstrike on a tent encampment in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

Eleven others were killed in Israeli fire at crowds of displaced Palestinians awaiting aid trucks brought in by the United Nations along the Salahuddin road in central Gaza, medics said.

The Israel army said it was looking into the reported deaths of people waiting for food. Regarding the other strikes, it said it was "operating to dismantle Hamas military capabilities" and "feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm."

On Tuesday, Gaza's health ministry said 397 Palestinians among those trying to get food aid had been killed and more than 3,000 wounded since aid deliveries restarted in late May.

Some in Gaza expressed concern that the latest escalations in the war between Israel and Hamas that began in October 2023 would be overlooked as the focus moved to Israel's five-day-old conflict with Iran.

"People are being slaughtered in Gaza, day and night, but attention has shifted to the Iran-Israel war. There is little news about Gaza these days," said Adel, a resident of Gaza City.

"Whoever doesn't die from Israeli bombs dies from hunger. People risk their lives every day to get food, and they also get killed and their blood smears the sacks of flour they thought they had won," he told Reuters via a chat app.

'FORGOTTEN'

Israel has been channeling much of the aid it is now allowing into Gaza through a new US- and Israeli-backed group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which operates a handful of distribution sites in areas guarded by Israeli forces.

It has said it will continue to allow aid into Gaza, home to more than 2 million people, while ensuring aid doesn't get into the hands of Hamas. Hamas denies seizing aid, saying Israel uses hunger as a weapon against the population in Gaza.

The Gaza war was triggered when Hamas-led fighters attacked Israel in October 2023, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli allies.

US ally Israel's subsequent military assault on Gaza has killed nearly 55,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry, displaced almost all the territory's residents, and caused a severe hunger crisis.

The assault has led to accusations of genocide and war crimes, which Israel denies.

Palestinians in Gaza have been closely following Israel's air war with Iran, long a major supporter of Hamas.

"We are maybe happy to see Israel suffer from Iranian rockets, but at the end of the day, one more day in this war costs the lives of tens of innocent people," said 47-year-old Shaban Abed, a father of five from northern Gaza.

"We just hope that a comprehensive solution could be reached to end the war in Gaza, too. We are being forgotten," he said.