Sunday, February 13, 2011

Infectious Revolution: Mideast Protests Grow

Clashes With Police Erupt in Algeria As 400 Demonstrators Arrested; Mideast on Unsteady Ground After Egypt

Algeria has been the scene of frequent anti-government demonstrations after years of emergency rule, high unemployment and general unrest, but Egypt's successful revolution sparked protests anew Saturday. A human rights advocate says 400 people were arrested there Saturday during demonstrations.

The departure of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has governments across the Mideast on uneasy footing, with some, like Bahrain, giving out money to stave off protesters. In Algeria and Yemen, anti-government demonstrations turned violent.

Some 10,000 people flooded into downtown Algiers, Algeria's capital, where they skirmished with riot police attempting to block off streets and disperse the crowd. An estimated 30,000 police have been deployed around the capital, BBC reports. Some arrests were reported.

Protesters chanted slogans including "No to the police state" and "Bouteflika out," a reference to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has been in power in this sprawling North African nation since 1999.

Under Algeria's long-standing state of emergency - in place since 1992 - protests are banned in Algiers but the government's repeated warnings for people to stay out of the streets apparently fell on deaf ears.

The march comes at a sensitive time, merely a month after another "people's revolution" in neighboring Tunisia that forced long-time autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali into exile on Jan. 14.

The success of those uprisings is fueling the hopes of those seeking change in Algeria, although many in this conflict-scarred nation fear any prospect of violence after living through a brutal insurgency by Islamist extremists in the 1990s that left an estimated 200,000 dead.

Saturday's march aimed to press for reforms to push Algeria toward democracy and did not include a specific call to oust Bouteflika. It was organized by the Coordination for Democratic Change in Algeria, an umbrella group for human rights activists, unionists, lawyers and others.

In a bid to placate militants, Algerian authorities announced last week that a state of emergency which has been in place since 1992, at the start of the Islamist insurgency, will be lifted in the "very near future." However, authorities warned that even then the ban on demonstrations in the capital would remain.

The army's decision to cancel Algeria's first multiparty legislative elections in January 1992 to thwart a likely victory by a Muslim fundamentalist party set off the insurgency. Scattered violence continues.

In Yemen, pro-government demonstrators armed with knives and batons broke up a protest on Saturday by around 2,000 Yemenis inspired by the overthrow of Egypt's president, Reuters reports.

Yemeni police with clubs also beat anti-government protesters.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, trying to ward off protests spreading across the Arab world, has promised to step down when his term ends in 2013, but the opposition has yet to respond to his call to join a unity government, Reuters reports. The opposition wants talks to take place under Western or Gulf Arab auspices.

In Bahrain, the nation's king said he will give the equivalent of $2,650 to each Bahraini family ahead of protests scheduled for next week, Al Jazeera reports.

Activists in the majority Shia population in Bahrain had called for protests demanding political, social and economic reforms, and the Sunni rulers were seeking to placate them, Al Jazeera reports.

The Bahraini government has made several concessions in recent weeks, such as higher social spending and offering to release some minors arrested during a security crackdown against some Shi'ite groups last August, Al Jazeera reports.

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