Repression in Algeria continues to be denounced after opposition leader arrested for "insulting" president

Algerian opposition leader Fethi Ghares was arrested on charges of insulting the president and undermining national unity. According to his wife and human rights groups, Algerian authorities arrested the leader on charges including allegedly insulting President Abdelmadjid Tebboune.

Fethi Ghares, coordinator of the small leftist Democratic and Social Movement party, was taken from his home in a suburb of Algiers on Wednesday night, his wife Messaouda Cheballah said. The accused was thus remanded in custody.

According to his lawyers, Ghares, 47, was arrested on charges including "insulting the president" and "publishing information likely to undermine national unity". No further details were given. 

Said Salhi, vice president of the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights (ALDHR), condemned the arrest and said it was another sign of "repression" in Algeria. In a statement on Facebook, Salhi accused the Algerian authorities of imprisoning the leader of a political party "for expressing his opinion". "Political action is not a crime," he said.

Ghares joined the pro-democracy Hirak movement in 2019 as it sought to topple four-term President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in mass protests that swept across the country. The movement defines itself as a national, peaceful and popular movement with strong political demands and denounces institutional corruption. 

It was in February 2019 that the first mass mobilisations took place, with people taking to the streets to express themselves for the first time since Algeria's independence. These people did not want a fifth mandate for Bouteflika.

Even after Bouteflika's resignation in April of that year, the movement pressed ahead with its demand for reform of Algeria's dominant political system, a system in which there is no political alternative to the ruler and in which the role of the army is preponderant. According to the protesters, the same story is now being repeated under President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, and the new president is the same as the previous one, so the protests continue. 

The government has banned Hirak's demonstrations and intensified legal proceedings against opponents, activists, journalists and academics.

Some 300 people are currently in detention on Hirak-related charges, according to the prisoners' rights group the National Committee for the Release of Detainees (NCRD). Last month, the ALDHR said seven leading figures of the protest movement were arrested across the country. Some 300 people are currently imprisoned on Hirak-related charges, according to the NCRD.

The Hirak had called for a mass boycott of the country's parliamentary elections held last month, with the authorities struggling to contain the movement's influence. The boycott was supported by most political parties, as they had already done in the referendum for constitutional reform in November 2020 and the presidential election held in October 2019 that saw Tebboune win. 

In the end, around 30 per cent of registered voters participated in the elections, with a very low voter turnout, following days of mass protests and political unrest.  

President Tebboune summed up: "I am not interested in turnout". "What matters to me is that those who come out of the ballot box have the popular legitimacy that will allow them to exercise legislative power (...) the people wanted elections and there have been elections". 

It was the lowest turnout in the history of the North African country, which confirms the rejection by Algerian society of the process with which the regime is trying to recompose itself after the departure in April 2019 of Abdelaziz Bouteflika.