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Rabat- The Algerian population, including members of the diaspora, continues to be exasperated by the repression and the economic crisis in their country.
Both Algerians at home and those residing abroad have been organizing sit-ins and protests to warn the international community about the continued violations of human rights in the North African country, including arbitrary arrests of demonstrators and dissidents, police crackdowns on protests, and the chronic lack of substantive reforms.
Intense political repression
In a show of solidarity with and support for their countrymen suffering back home, many Algerians took last week to the streets in New York to express their frustration and discontent in the presence of Algeria’s Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra. 
Lamamra, who is in New York to participate in the 76th General Assembly of the UN, currently taking place from September 14 until September 30, was met last week with a sight of disillusioned and disappointed Algerians protesting for substantive democratic reforms in their country.
After obtaining permission to demonstrate, a group of 200 Algerians took to the streets to protest near the UN Headquarters in New York.
The demonstration was one of many actions protesters held to demand an end to the Algerian regime’s repression of the Hirak (popular) movement and arbitrary arrests.
Women and men of all ages carried banners printed with slogans that condemn the subservience of Algeria’s political class to the military and the hijacking of the Hirak’s demands for substantial reforms and a break with “Le Pouvoir,” the country’s old and self-entitled political establishment.
The slogans varied from “Republic Not Military Barracks” to “Free All Political Prisoners.”
As they vented their frustration before their country’s top diplomat, some of the protesters chose to draw attention to human rights abuses by displaying pictures of people who are detained arbitrarily for either participating in Hirak movements or for being linked to NGOs that the Algerian regime dubbed as “terrorists.”
Aziz Mdaghri, MWN correspondent in New York, took exclusive pictures and videos of the protests, showing demonstrators as angry as those in Algeria.
Many of the protesters waved or carried flags calling on the UN to “stop [its] complicity” with the Algerian regime and intervene to end Algeria’s political prisoners’ suffering.
Some also carried banners condemning Spain’s decision to expel activists at Algeria’s request.
Although the Algerian government is banning protests in public, many in Algeria and in the diaspora have been using social media as a platform to protest the repression and ban on demonstrations.
Earlier this month, the Algerian police carried out a wave of arrests among activities from the Kabylie region.
Continuation of the Bouteflika years
The arbitrary arrests have occurred as the country is in the grip of an economic crisis that erupted before the end of the Bouteflika era, when protesters flocked to the streets across the country to call for the immediate resignation of an old and incapacitated president who wanted to run for a fifth term.
Even after the forced resignation of Bouteflika, however, protests continued amid fears that the politico-military establishment that has run Algeria for the past decades could hijack the Hirak’s pro-democracy agenda.
This led many Algerians to boycott the presidential election in 2019, which recorded an exceptionally low participation rate.
In June 2021, with the growing perception that President Tebboune’s Algeria was in many ways an extension of the Bouteflika years, many Algerians boycotted the parliamentary elections in protest for bolder reforms.
The voter turnout for the 2021 legislative elections stood at 30.2%, and many observers described this as the “lowest in at least 20 years for legislative elections.”
Over the months, the protesters have continuously expressed their reasons for boycotting elections with even more protests, despite the COVID crisis and its accompanying constraints.
When asked about their motivation, some of the demonstrators have argued that Algeria will not see any development unless the government decides to limit the powers of the military.
Protests have long carried banners, calling for all elites, including military officers, to step down.
The sky-high prices of goods and basic necessities such as food are also contributing to fueling dissatisfaction and crises in the nation.
Algerians have long complained about food shortages, including cooking oil, bread, and milk, as well as protesting the scarce supply of drinking water in the country.
COVID exacerbated Algeria’s long-running crises
The country’s economy was also negatively impacted by the oil price volatility after the COVID-19 crisis provoked an alarming decline in gas and oil prices.
According to the Washington Institute, the crisis caused the country’s hydrocarbon revenues to drop by 33% from $33 billion in 2019, down to $22 billion in 2020.
“Although its gas sales have rebounded somewhat in 2021, its gas exports are typically seasonal, so the improved first-quarter numbers are unlikely to be sustainable throughout the remainder of the year,” the Washington-based institute said.
In addition, remittances from the Algerian diaspora also experienced an alarming decline last year due to the lockdown, the institute added. The remittances contribute to the country’s economy by 1%.
In a recent note on Algeria’s economic outlook in the past year, the African Development Bank (AfDB) said that the country’s GDP shrank by 4.7% in 2020. According to the note, COVID-19 exacerbated Algeria’s long-standing economic ills, plunging far deeper into crisis.
“The fall in revenues from oil and gas exports contributed to a further widening of the public and external deficits,” AfDB said.
The Algerian regime, which is used to anti-establishment sentiments, has traditionally such waves of anti-government protests and democratic demands by playing the national security card and scapegoating “foreign plots” aimed at destabilizing the country.
This is what has happened in recent weeks as the country’s High Security Council has taken to blaming Algeria’s recent ills – including the wildfires that hit northern Algeria this August – on Morocco and other third parties.
But as many observers and critics increasingly point to the Algerian government’s old trick of manufacturing tensions with “the enemies of Algeria,” it remains to be seen whether many will this time buy into the regime’s usual crisis-management talking points.
In an insightful article on the continued plight of Algerians, Algerian journalist Kamel Daoud lambasted the regime for creating a suffocating political atmosphere.
“Today, Algeria lacks meaning, is weary, as if emptied of an essential bone,” Daoud wrote, adding that the regime-sponsored anti-Semitism and Morocco-bashing will not respond to the demands of most Algerians: meaningful change and a political class that genuinely cares for the country.
“Neither the hatred of France or Morocco, nor prayer or soccer, nor the regime’s fantasies about Palestine,” he wrote, “can replace this essential lack” of political meaning and social progress.
