Algiers: Algerian police thwarted a rally by thousands of pro-democracy supporters on Saturday, breaking up the crowd into isolated groups to keep them from marching.
Police brandishing clubs, but no firearms, weaved their way through the crowd in central Algiers, banging their shields, tackling some protesters and keeping traffic flowing through the planned march route.
The gathering, organised by the Coordination for Democratic Change in Algeria, comes a week after a similar protest, which organisers said brought an estimated 10,000 people and up to 26,000 riot police onto the streets of Algiers. Officials put turnout at the previous rally at 1,500.
The new protest comes on the heels of uprisings in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt that toppled those countries' autocratic leaders.
Police presence at yesterday's march was more discrete than the week before, when huge contingents of riot police were deployed throughout the capital the night before the march. On Friday night, by contrast, the capital was calm, with police taking up their positions only yesterday morning.
Still, by breaking up the crowd, the police managed to turn the planned march into a chaotic rally of small groups.
Opposition lawmaker Tahar Besbas, of the Rally for Culture and Democracy, RCD, party, was hospitalised with an apparent head injury after he was clubbed by police. Besbas' supporters said police initially refused to take him to a hospital, though he was eventually taken away in an ambulance.
It was not immediately clear how serious Besbas' injury was.
Human rights advocate Ali Yahia Abdenour, of the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights, was undeterred by the police. The frail elderly man cried out, "We want democracy, the sovereignty of the people."
Another demonstrator, 23-year-old Khalifa Lahouazi, a university student from Tizi Ouzou, east of the capital, said he "came here to seek my legitimate rights.
"We're living an insupportable life with this system," said Lahouazi, a university student from Tizi Ouzou, in the Kabylie region 100km east of Algiers. "It's the departure of the system, not just Bouteflika, that we want," he said, referring to President Abdul Aziz Bouteflika.
