"Hirak - season 2": in Algeria, the Hirak is back in the streets

, Algiers, Friday February 26, 2021: after a year of sleep due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Hirak demonstrators have returned to the streets.

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A few days after celebrating the second anniversary of the Hirak, this revolt movement which had made it possible to remove former President Bouteflika from power, the demonstrators took to the streets of the country on Friday afternoon.

In Tizi Ouzou, Oran or Algiers, the supporters of the movement returned to chant anti-militarist slogans and demand the end of the regime in place.

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“ 

We are pacifists and the military must leave the presidential palace!

 This is, in essence, what the demonstrators in the streets of Algiers proclaimed this Friday afternoon, back in the streets for this new day of Hirak's march, after being put on hold since March 2020 due to the health crisis .

There is this atmosphere of reunion between Algerians and Algerians and also the preservation of the civilized and peaceful character of Hirak,

explains Djalal Mokrani, of the Youth Action Rally, contacted by phone by

Victor Mauriat

of the Africa service of RFI.

It is only a demonstration of the determination of the Algerian people to continue their peaceful fight to wrest their rights

 ”.

It is a confirmation for us that the Hirak is there and must continue on its way

Listen to Djalal Mokrani from the Youth Action Gathering

Demand for freedom and democracy or end of the military regime, The demands remain the same but in the background the economic crisis is making itself felt.

She also pushed people into the streets, according to journalist and activist Tinhinane Makaci: “

People are really starting to feel the economic crisis, more and more people are talking about it even if there are no slogans (advancing ) socio-economic demands ... slogans remain about political demands

.

"

"The same faces and the same demands"

The Algerians marched in Algiers, but also in Bejaïa and Tizi Ouzou, in Kabylie (north-east), in Bordj Bou Arreridj (east) and in Oran and Tlemcen (north-west).

Police roadblocks had been erected at the gates of the capital and if the police system was, according to the demonstrators, less impressive than

last Monday, the anniversary of the start of the Hirak

, the

police

used batons and tear gas to prevent the demonstrators to join the Grande Poste in Algiers, an emblematic place of anti-regime rallies.

According to the National Committee for the Liberation of Detainees (CNLD), more than 500 arrests took place across the country, including 120 in the city of Oran.

Most of those arrested were released at the end of the day.

For civil society, this day is a success.

With the ban on demonstrating because of the Covid-19, explains the vice-president of the Algerian League for Human Rights, the authorities hoped that the Hirak would disappear.

This is not the case, adds Saïd Salhi: "it is as if time had stopped in March 2020 to start again this Friday with the same faces and the same demands and the same determination".

Algeria #Hirak pacifique Act III, at the 106th march which took place in several cities of the country:


All the people arrested today, hundreds (more than 700) in about thirty wilayas of the country were all released. # StandUp4HumanRights pic.twitter.com/grdqDYM045

- said SALHI (@ saidsalhi527) February 26, 2021

Also to listen

: Hirak in Algeria: two years of protest

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