The Hirak Movement and its Suppression
Algeria today is the largest country in Africa, with a vast landscape containing mountains, deserts, and a coastline on the Mediterranean Sea. However, since Algeria's independence in 1962, the country has been ruled for the most part by the military establishment and the FLN party, which has maintained a tight grip on the political scene. However, the Algerian people eventually became fed up with this system due to the long-serving president Abdelaziz Bouteflika's announcement to seek a fifth term, which sparked the Hirak protests in 2019, leading to the military disfavouring him, which in turn led to his ouster. Despite this, the initial excitement of Algerians in the Hirak protests soon led to disappointment as former prime minister Abdelmajid Tebboune won the presidential elections in December 2019, with the turnout at under 40%, according to the Constitutional Council, while others claimed it was as low as 20%. These election results, combined with no reforms being put into place before the elections, led to the protestors calling the election illegitimate and soon led to the revival of the Hirak protests after the ouster of Bouteflika.
The Hirak protests had remained strong, maintaining weekly demonstrations since the election of Tebboune until the Covid-19 pandemic led to the movement voluntarily suspending itself in March 2020. The campaign would soon restart their protests throughout Algerian cities by February 2021 as the Algerian movement's reform demands were still unmet. However, this soon led to a government crackdown. First, in May of that year, the Interior Ministry banned unauthorized protests and required permits for their start and stop times as well as the names of the organizers. In addition to this decision by the Interior Ministry, many activists associated with the Hirak movement were imprisoned on terrorism charges, such as journalist Saïd Boudour. These charges of terrorism against activists were a product of Tebboune's change of the legal code by presidential decree, where the definition of terrorism under article 87 was expanded to mean "to work for or to incite by any means, to accede to power or change the system of governance by non-constitutional means"; and to "harm the integrity of national territory or to incite doing so, by any means." Therefore, during 2021 there were 6,200 people detained and 1,800 prosecuted since the restart of the Hirak movement that same year. Since then, by February 2022, there have been 280 activists in prison, according to the National Committee for the Liberation of Detainees(CNLD), many associated with the Hirak movement, while the Algerian League for Human Rights claimed that as many as 330 activists are in jail.
Thus, the Hirak protests have been in a state decline due to a government crackdown. Still, there has also been ideological incoherence in the Hirak movement as it contained a diverse array of actors solely aimed against the Algerian regime. This disunity has been a problem for the movement as these groups have ideological positions that contradict one another, such as the secularists and the Islamists of the Rachad Movement, who were declared a terrorist organization by the Algerian government in May 2021. Therefore, the government has had success against the Hirak movement due to their crackdown and the movement's infighting. However, the lack of democratic reforms and the failure of the Hirak Movement could soon lead to bloodshed and instability in Algeria. This is due to the Hirak Movement's failure to provide an acceptable alternative for its many diverse groups, which, combined with economic underinvestment in certain regions, increased domestic consumption, and the world turning away from fossil fuels could lead to violence as people denied from political participation attempt to seek another outlet to express their frustrations with the current political establishment. Thus, due to this multiplicity of factors, the Hirak Movement’s decline could soon lead to problems not just for the Algerian people but for the government and the stability of the country.
Original Image Credit: Khirani Said — Edited by GorStra