This weekend marks a year since the birth of the protest movement known as “Hirak” in Algeria.
Anti-regime protesters have designated Friday and Saturday a landmark moment, mobilizing to “disqualify the system’s agenda of self-renewal, and to lay the foundations for a new republic.”
By noon, thousands of demonstrators including women and children were gathered peacefully in front of the central post office in Algiers, the assembly point for weekly protests.
Anti-riot police were deployed among the crowd, who chanted “We’re not going to stop.”
Checkpoints were installed on roads into the city, according to social media, complicating access to the commemoration for Algerians outside the capital.
Protests first erupted on February 22 last year, in response to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announcing he intended a run for a fifth term, despite being debilitated by a 2013 stroke.
Less than six weeks later, he stepped down after losing the support of the then-army chief in the face of enormous weekly demonstrations..
The election of Abdelmadjid Tebboune, once a prime minister under Bouteflika, as president in December appears to have reinforced the regime’s hand and further stalled the protest movement.
On Thursday evening, Tebboune paid homage to the protest movement in an interview with local media, promising to implement “all of its demands” after it prevented the “total collapse” of the country.
But in a manifesto published Thursday, organisations from the Hirak movement called for “continued mobilization” to force out members of the old guard, arguing that they could not oversee the process of reform.
They denounced the state taking “repressive measures” against journalists, activists and protests.
The size of marches across the country on Friday and Saturday will represent a key test of the spontaneous, leaderless and youth-dominated movement.
