Tunisian protests spread to Algeria

[theAnarch]

fpQkHcIJpFg



Police have been deployed outside mosques and a university in the Algerian capital after fresh rioting erupted overnight following days of protests over rising prices and unemployment.
About 40 youths armed with swords attacked several shops in the El Biar area of Algiers late on Thursday, looting a restaurant and emptying a jewellery store before security forces arrived, local reporters and witnesses said.


Rioting rocks Algerian capital

There was a second night of clashes in the volatile Bab el Oued suburb, with police firing tear gas to disperse demonstrators, a witness said. One witness said youths had hurled Molotov cocktails and another said they carried swords.
Police were positioned around mosques in Bab el Oued, Belcourt and Bachjarrah, poorer areas of the city, in case of more unrest after Friday prayers, according to reporters at the scene.
There was also extra security at a police station, a new shopping mall and a major hotel in an area near Bab Ezzouar airport, while a nearby university was surrounded by security forces.
Social trauma
Salima Ghezali, a leading Algerian journalist and human rights activist, told Al Jazeera in a phone interview that the outbreak of protests is "both very local and very global".
Algerians have followed protests over economic dissatisfaction not only in neighbouring Tunisia, but also in Europe.
At the same time, she said the rioting is a consequence of years of economic and political mismanagement.
Although hardly a week goes by without geographically-specific protests over particular incidents, she said that the nationwide movement that has sprung up this week is very different.
"This is affecting a large part of the Algerian territory," she said.
Asked if this week's rioting is comparable to the October 1988 demonstrations that forced the government to grant wider media freedom and hold the country's first democratic elections (which were subsequently halted by the military), she said the current political situation is far grimmer.
"Unlike in 1988, the country today is deeply traumatised," she said, refering to the "dirty war" of the 1990s (http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/2010/11/2010118122224407570.html) that left 200,000 people dead and an estimated 20,000 forcibly disappeared.
There has never been any investigations into the alleged war crimes committed by all sides during this civil war.
Despite coming in the context of monoparty rule by the FLN, the 1988 uprising found political leadership in both the "Islamist" and the left-wing opposition movements, Ghezali told Al Jazeera.
Algeria is now a democracy, but the FLN remains in power. Opposition parties argue there is little space for them to participate in the political sphere.
Those movements have been severely weakened over the past two decades and have been "targeted by repression".
She said that the government led by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, meanwhile, is ignoring the social and economic woes endured by most Algerians.
"We are heading towards a social disaster," she said. "They don't seem to realise this."
"I hope with all my heart that I am wrong."
Football matches scrapped
All top-level football matches scheduled in Algeria on Friday and Saturday have been scrapped, the national football league has announced.
Travellers said a road between the capital and eastern suburbs on the coast had been blocked since Thursday afternoon after youths set up barricades, also clashing with security forces.
Authorities cleaned up the debris on Friday after the overnight unrest in Algiers, removing damaged cars at dawn, a journalist for the AFP news agency said.
In the Annacer-Diar el Afia suburb, a Renault-Dacia car dealership showed signs of fire and residents said a public bus was also torched, although only burn marks on the road were visible by morning.
"Why are they doing this?" an elderly woman said.
"Yesterday I cried at home. Young people have a reason but they shouldn't be reacting like this," she said.

Unemployment anger
Protests led by small groups of young men have flared in several towns this week, linked to anger about a spike in the costs of basic food items by about 30 per cent this month, unemployment and a lack of social housing.
Similar protests have rattled neighbouring Tunisia since mid-December (http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/spotlight/tunisia/).
The Algerian daily El-Watan newspaper reported that several people had been wounded in the Algerian clashes, but the official media has made no comment and authorities have only assured that they are tackling the spike in costs.
Commerce Minister Mustapha Benbada said after meeting with producers and importers of cooking oil and sugar - which have seen the steepest price hikes - that his ministry "is beginning to control the crisis" and it would be resolved by next week, national radio reported Thursday.
About 75 per cent of Algerians are under the age of 30, and 20 percent of the youth are unemployed, according to the International Monetary Fund.

[Crux]

Tunisian revolt spreads to Algeria

www.socialistworld.net, 10/01/2011
website of the committee for a workers' international, CWI
Solidarity with the Algerian and Tunisian masses!
Cedric Gerome, CWI
http://www.socialistworld.net/img/20110110Grafik4899516135601937356.jpg
With the new year having hardly begun, an important wave of revolt is hitting North Africa. While in Tunisia, an unprecedented period of protest is shaking the Ben Ali dictatorship, for over a week, Algeria has been also overcome by a series of popular “riots”. These have involved, until now, most notably young people, in a country where the population below 30 years old represents 75% of the total. This massive unrest reveals to the eyes of the world the depth of the despair and rage of this ‘no future’ generation, sharpened by the effects of the international crisis of capitalism.
This wave of riots, which started in the western suburbs of Algiers, rapidly swept to other cities such as Oran, Blida, Bouira, Tizi Ouzou, Dejlfa, Ouargla, Constantine and many other parts of the country. Most of these places have not experienced riots of this scale for over two decades. Even governmental figures, if they are worth anything, are forced to recognise that about 24 wilayas (regions) have been hit by the movement - in other words, half the country.

http://www.socialistworld.net/img/article/2011-01-10Grafik1587598712676875679.jpg

Day and night, groups of youths have engaged in violent clashes with the police, blocked roads with burning tyres or tree trunks, and in some cases attacking public buildings and everything that symbolises the authority of the state and the wealth of the rich. Even if riots in Algeria are far from a new phenomenon, their present scale, as well as their rapid geographical extension, giving them a national character, could be a signal of explosions of greater proportions in the near future.
In the past, the regime had been able to contain such explosions of anger as isolated incidents. Now, it seems that a new breach has been opened, and many working class people have been looking towards the youth with sympathy and inspiration, though not always approving of their methods of action, especially when acts of looting or destruction have been involved. Some reports state that in some areas, inhabitants have been organising in order to discourage young people from some counter-productive acts of vandalism.

http://www.socialistworld.net/img/article/2011-01-10Grafik7748718088358217688.jpg

A ‘pre-1988’ climate

But these acts, carried out by a minority, cannot eclipse the overall significance of these riots. The human rights website, “Algeria Watch”, commented that: “Very few Algerians are against the mobilisation of young people; in street conversations, most of them find it legitimate, in a country where other ways out are blocked, and the ordinary means of expression are absent. The parallels with the events of October 1988 are commonly pointed out amongst the oldest ones.” That year, the huge social crisis facing the country led to a series of riots, walk outs and strikes, which ultimately led to the downfall of the monolithic one-party rule of the FLN. Bloody repression by the army left several hundreds people dead, and the lack of an independent workers’ left political force to drive the revolt forward was exploited in the aftermath by reactionary Islamist forces, which plunged the country into a terrible civil war for a decade.
As neighbouring Tunisia illustrates, the iron grip of a repressive regime and the lack of basic democratic rights, which have contained opposition and frustration for so long, means that once such energy has been released, it can go much further and take an extremely explosive turn. Commenting on the prospects of such a movement, Mohamed Zitout, a former Algerian diplomat, told Al Jazeera: “It is a revolt, and probably a revolution, of an oppressed people who have, for 50 years, been waiting for housing, employment, and a proper and decent life in a very rich country.” If it is not yet a revolution, the possibility of the present movement taking on revolutionary dimensions is clearly present, in a country where the traditions of resistance of the oppressed are ancestral. The attitude of the working class, which has not yet entered the scene as such, will be decisive in determining the development of these protests.

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Accumulated anger has been bursting out simultaneously in many areas, shared and assisted by internet facilities such as facebook, youtube or twitter, cutting across the attempts by the State media to cover up the scale of what is happening. Like in Tunisia, the violent repression deployed by the regime as a response (in Tunisia, around 20 people have been reported shot dead during demonstrations, while in Algeria, at least 5 people have been killed) has only helped to inflame people’s anger even more. Unsurprisingly, the ongoing violent repression and killing of demonstrators has benefited from the silence and complicity of Western ‘democratic’ governments, who, at best, have limited themselves to expressing their ‘concern’.
300 people from Tunisian and Algerian backgrounds gathered on Sunday afternoon in Marseille to demand an end to repression in the Maghreb. The CWI is asking for the immediate release of all people arrested because of their involvement in protests in Tunisia and Algeria, and is encouraging similar actions wherever possible.

http://www.socialistworld.net/img/article/2011-01-10Grafik1249193009915417367.jpg Banner reads: "Stop repression in Maghreb"

Not just a food riot

This tsunami of riots does not come like thunder from a calm sky. Already for months, a revolt has been brewing in Algeria. According to the daily newspaper, Liberté, an average of almost 9,000 riots and ‘troubles’ each month took place in 2010 alone. For months, workers at companies in Algeria went on strike one after another. In March of last year, we wrote: “Strike after strike, protest after protest, are transforming the country into a social cauldron ready to explode at any time.” This is increasingly being confirmed by the recent events. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the recent dramatic rise in food prices, which have risen by between 20 and 30% since the beginning of the month. This is particularly the case for oil, flour and especially sugar, the price of which has increased by 80% in the last three months alone.
Wage increases achieved in the public sector, after years of struggle and strikes remain derisory. And as these increases have not even been implemented everywhere, they are already eaten up by soaring prices. In the private sector, the situation is even worse. To go shopping and feed one’s family has become a daily challenge; for the increasing number of people with no job, it is an impossible task. The insecurity of life and rampaging misery have convinced most Algerian people that the public measures of price controls are absolutely useless, and give total freedom to speculators and monopolies to increase relentlessly their profit margins on the backs of the poorest, including small shop keepers and market and street vendors. In the streets of the working class neighbourhood of Bab El-Oued in Algiers, which has become a symbolic bastion of the protests, people kept repeating, “50% wage increase for the cops! And what about us?” Indeed, the only sector which has benefited recently from a significant wage increase has been the police, in a conscious attempt by the State to increase the reliability of its armed forces amid growing prospects of social disturbances.

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Fearing losing control over the situation, an urgent meeting of ministers last weekend agreed a number of measures to reduce the price of sugar and cooking oil. But this will hardly be enough to appease the situation, even less the huge hatred against the regime. Indeed, even if the rising cost of living has become a critical concern and one of the decisive triggers of the recent revolt, the reasons for the anger are much more profound. What the youth are expressing in the streets is part of a general discontent. “Expensive life, no decent housing, unemployment, drugs, marginalisation”. That’s how the inhabitants of Oran, the second biggest Algerian city, are summing up the reasons of their protests.
There as elsewhere, this cocktail of factors, framed by a police state which muzzles any serious opposition, and protects the clique of rich corrupt gangsters in power, constitutes the background of recent events. Social inequalities between the poor and the ruling elite have grown in proportions not seen since independence. While Algerian GDP has tripled in the last ten years, the gigantic revenues from oil, responsible for most of this growth, have only served to fill the pockets and bank accounts of a tiny minority, close to the ruling clan, while the majority of people increasingly suffer from under-nutrition, or even famine. The increasing cases of money laundering and corruption affecting all sectors and at all levels of decision-making, have contributed to highlight the continuous hijacking of the country’s wealth for the benefit and luxurious life of a few.

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Reported by the newspaper, El Watan, a young demonstrator marvellously summed up the situation: “Nothing will hold us back this time. Life has become too expensive and famine is threatening our families, while apparatchiks are diverting billions and are getting rich at our expense. We do not want this dog’s life anymore. We demand our share in the wealth of this country.”
Youth in despair

In 2001, young Algerian protestors facing live ammunition shouted to the police: “You can not kill us, we are already dead”. The same “nothing to lose” spirit is fuelling the present rebellion of the youth. Indeed, no perspective is on the offer for a generation that is particularly hardly hit by huge levels of unemployment, and reduced to day-to-day survival activities. Officially, unemployment affects 21.3% of young people between 16 and 24; the reality is probably even worse, as all the statistics are completely falsified by the authorities, with some even estimating that 60% of the active population below 30 are without work. Even a large proportion of graduated young people are filling the ranks of the unemployed once their studies end. The future for young Algerians is often seen as a choice between prison and exile, and suicides rate among this category of the population reaches sky-high proportions. The building of “fortress Europe” and the increasing repressive measures being taken against the numerous candidates for emigration to Europe mean that in practice, there is no other way out for these young people than to take the road of struggle and collective action.

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Although generalised, the present movement mainly involves those deprived youths from poor neighbourhoods, and has not yet gathered around it the active mobilisation of the mass of the population. The entering into action of the working class will be necessary to give this movement a more organised and mass character, and avoid it being transformed into futile and disorganised acts of despair that could be more easily crushed by the state forces.
While in Tunisia, the trade union federation, the UGTT (General Union of Tunisian Workers) has expressed its solidarity with the youth and assisted their struggle through calling for action, the Algerian workers can hardly rely on such initiatives from the UGTA (General Union of Algerian Workers), which has reached an incredible level of corruption, betrayal and subservience to the Bouteflika regime. The only public statement made by the UGTA leadership until now has disgustingly defended the government’s version of the situation. Over the last few years, this submission to the government has cut it off from entire sectors of trade unionists, who left the UGTA to join more combative, independent trade unions. The battle to vitalise, unify and democratise these independent trade unions are some of the important tasks facing the working class at the present.
The setting up of local committees of resistance in the neighbourhoods and in the workplaces could be a very useful tool in order to assist the struggle of the youth, to involve the rest of the population in mass actions, and to coordinate, along with independent trade unions, work stoppages on a national level. Already, in some sectors, such as the dockers of Algiers’ port or workers from the healthcare sector, are talking about engaging in strike action. This is of a huge importance. Generalising such steps could transform the situation. An appeal for a national strike in support of the youth rebellion would enjoy a mass response and would contribute to transform the huge anger and frustration that exists into a much more powerful movement, that could potentially bring this rotten regime down, and open the way for really democratic, and socialist change.

[Sentinel]

The situation is indeed very interesting, thanks for posting this comrade.


An appeal for a national strike in support of the youth rebellion would enjoy a mass response and would contribute to transform the huge anger and frustration that exists into a much more powerful movement, that could potentially bring this rotten regime down, and open the way for really democratic, and socialist change.Indeed. Let's hope the socialists in the region are up to the task and competent enough to canalise the unrest into an ordered, regular socialist revolution.

A national strike could be a good first step.

[scourge007]

I wonder if this will spread to the rest of North Africa and into the Middle East ?

[AmericanSocialist]

Viva la revolucion! It seems like many more people around the world are being fed up with oppressive rulers and their capitalist agenda.

[erupt]

I wonder if this will spread to the rest of North Africa and into the Middle East ?
A leftist mentality spreading over Arabic culture rather than an Islamic one would be ideal, I gotta say.

[INI]

I wonder if this will spread to the rest of North Africa and into the Middle East ?

Peace.

I believe it is slowly spreading. The demonstrations broke out in Tunisia after a 26 year old, Mohamed Bouazizi, self-immolated in mid-December. Since then another Tunisian, four Algerians, an Egyptian, and a Mauritanian have taken their lives in their respective countries to protest their condition. I believe this is causing the people to grow consciousness in the region, and soon there will be more like what we have seen in Tunisia.

Solidarity.

[William Howe]

Have any of the socialist parties risen up yet to leadership over the revolts? I hope they have/will soon. They'd be foolish not to strike now while the iron's hot.

Regardless though, I'm glad the people finally threw off their chains and stood up to the corrupt bastards of their government.

[ckaihatsu]

[From http://www.ft-ci.org]

Revolts in the Maghreb: Algeria, another powder keg about to explode

By Carlos Munis
Thursday, January 20, 2011

While protests were shaking Tunisia, the main cities of neighboring Algeria also caught fire in January. The reasons why Algerian youth rebelled for a week are the same ones that led, in the country next door, to the fall of Ben Ali: injustice, the absence of a future for young people condemned to unemployment and destitution.

The straw that broke the camel's back was the government's increase in the prices of basic necessities. The cost of flour and oil doubled in recent months, until it reached record prices, while a kilo of sugar, that, a few months ago, hardly cost 70 dinars, some 0.7 euros, reached 150 dinars, some 1.5 euros. The minimum wage of 150,000 dinars (150 euros), when at least one member of a family is lucky enough to earn it, only covers one-fourth of the basic necessities of a home. When, in addition, information about the possible destruction of the shantytowns in the popular Bab el-Oued neighborhood on the outskirts of the capital, began to circulate, the young people went out to the street and began to confront the cops.

The increase in the prices of basic necessities seemed all the more scandalous since Bouteflika's FLN government, which has dominated the country's political scene with authoritarian methods since Independence, became more daring in recent months, because of the big foreign currency reserves of the country, thanks to the high prices of crude oil and gas. The economic data brandished by the government have little impact on the 60% unemployment rate that is devastating Algerian young people who, most of the time, dream of following in the tracks of the "haragas," applicants for immigration to Europe who frequently die in open boats in the Mediterranean between the coasts of the Maghreb and those of Fortress Europe. The youth revolt lasted more than a week, with explosions in different cities of the interior (Oran, Setif, Batna, Annaba, Constantina, Skidda), leaving a toll of 3 dead, hundreds of wounded, and more than a thousand arrested. Pressure from the street has again diminished, but the anger continues to be palpable, according to the main independent Algerian newspapers. In recent days, there were several cases of attempted suicide like that of Mohamed Bouazizi, in both Algeria and Egypt. At this precise moment, the spreading of the Tunisian danger for the Algerian bourgeoisie is materializing through desperate acts. It is not certain, however, that Algeria could not undergo a process like the Tunisian one, in a short time or in the near future.

The government is deeply divided and riddled with rivalries, since President Bouteflika is ill. He can no longer stir up the "Islamist danger" as in years past, to discipline the workers and the people. His best allies are, on one hand, the forces of repression, whose wages were increased by 50% three months ago, and, on the other, the leadership of the only trade union headquarters connected to the regime, the UGTA. It is not certain, however, that the workers' and young people's anger will not end up creating the conditions for a Tunisian process in Algeria. That is what Paris and the European Union fear most, since Algeria is a heavyweight in the region, both at the political and economic level.

[Frosty Weasel]

This is sure to make Berlusconi's head hit the ceiling given his government's interests in Algeria.

[Ocean Seal]

So the international revolution spreads.
There is no longer an insignificant force, because there are no longer isolated people's.
Worker's of the world are uniting.

[INI]

Here is an article I read from the BBC earlier today.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12260465


Man dies after setting himself on fire in Saudi Arabia


A man has died after setting himself on fire in Saudi Arabia's south-western region of Jizan, officials have said.
Reports in the Saudi media say the man, who was in his 60s, set himself on fire using a petroleum product in the town of Samitah, and died later in hospital.
There have been several acts of self-immolation in the Arab world, mimicking the suicide of a man in Tunisia which provoked the anti-government uprising.
A Mauritanian man who set himself on fire also died in hospital on Saturday.
Yacoub Ould Dahoud, a 43-year-old businessman, was transferred to a clinic in Morocco with 90% burns after his act of self-immolation in protest at Mauritanian government on Monday in the capital, Nouakchott, his family said.
'Only the beginning' It was the death of a young unemployed man that triggered the protests in Tunisia which led to the overthrow of President Zine al-Abdine Ben Ali last week.
Unable to find a job after college, Muhammad Bouazizi, decided to start selling vegetables on the streets of Sidi Bouzid. But officials confiscated his unlicensed cart, and slapped and insulted him.
On 17 December, the 26-year-old stood the town's main square, doused himself in petrol and set himself on fire. By the time he died of his injuries on 4 January, protests over his treatment had spread throughout Tunisia.


There have since been a series of self-immolations in the Arab world.
On Tuesday, a 25-year-old unemployed Egyptian died after setting himself on fire in the port city of Alexandria, while three other people survived setting themselves on fire on the streets of the capital, Cairo.
Some acts of self-immolations have also been reported in Algeria.
The incident in Samitah was the first such incident in Saudi Arabia. Officials said the motive was not yet known, but the Sabq.org website said the dead man was angered by how difficult it was to gain Saudi nationality.
Mr Ben Ali has been in Saudi Arabia since fleeing Tunisia last week.
In neighbouring Yemen, thousands of people took part in a demonstration in the capital, Sanaa, demanding the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
"Get out, get out, Ali. Join your friend Ben Ali," the protesters chanted.
One of the organisers, Islamist MP and teachers' union leader Fouad Dahaba, said the rally represented only the beginning and that the "coming days will witness an escalation".
Yemen's government has shown little tolerance for dissent in the past, and the security forces fired tear gas to break up Saturday's protest. About 30 people were also detained, one security official said.
In Algeria, riot police also broke up an opposition demonstration by several hundred people in the capital, Algiers. Activists said more than 40 people were injured; the authorities put the number at 19.