General Strike in Algeria marks Anniversary of Insurrection

TIZI OUZOU, Algeria (AFP) - A general strike and mass protests brought Algeria's eastern Kabylie region to a standstill as the Berber minority marked the anniversaries of bloody protests seeking recognition of its distinct cultural and linguistic identity.

Ten thousand protestors, mostly young people, marched through the otherwise deserted streets of the regional capital Tizi Ouzou on Sunday, chanting slogans directed against the central government in Algiers. The protests were mainly peaceful but riot police clashed with students outside a theatre in Tizi Ouzou when a 10,000-strong march was diverted away from a prison holding Berber leader Belaid Abrika.

Every year the Kabylie region commemorates the events of April 1980, when severe riots broke out in the Kabylie capital Tizi Ouzou over Berber demands for cultural recognition, giving birth to the Berber Spring movement.

Sunday's protests also commemorated the so-called Black Spring of April 18, 2001 when over 100 people were killed in riots that followed the death of a secondary school pupil from gunshot wounds at a police station near Tizi Ouzou.

The Berber population of the poverty-stricken, mountainous region of Kabylie are bitter over economic and cultural marginalisation and angry over perceived official corruption in the north African country.

Sunday's protest in Tizi Ouzou passed through empty streets where only pharmacies, food and drink shops and news kiosks were open due to the general strike.

The protestors waved Algerian flags and signs with the letter Z in Berber script, a symbol of the long standing Berber demands for recognition of their distinct cultural standing and official rights for their language.

They shouted slogans like "the authorities -- murderers", "no negotiations -- free the detained" and "policeman -- terrorist".

The demonstrators also accused the police of bloodily repressing the April Berber uprisings in 1980 and 2001 and called for those responsible for the deaths in the 2001 riots to be brought to justice.

The march was to have ended in front of the prison where Berber leader Belaid Abrika is being held, but turned away at the last moment to avoid clashes with anti-riot police who had massed in front of the building.

In Bejaia, another major Kabylie city, thousands of demonstrators took part in a protest march on a prison where locals say 20 traditional Berber leaders (known as aarchs) from the region are being detained.

The demonstrations in both Bejaia and Tizi Ouzou ended with skirmishes between police and groups of young protestors armed with stones.

At the university in the capital Algiers, hundreds of students demonstrated in support of official rights for the Berber language, known as Tamazight.

Confined to their campus by a police large police presence, the demonstrators chanted "Today, tomorrow, Tamazight will be" and "Free and democratic Algeria"

Together the Berbers make up at least one-fifth of Algeria's population of some 31 million.

The inhabitants of Kabylie and the Berbers have preserved elements of their ancient culture and identity, despite conversion to Islam and subsequent Arabisation.

Protests also extended to France, Algeria's former colonial ruler, where 2,000 people demonstrated in the capital Paris on Sunday to demand freedom for leaders of the Berber movement who are currently behind bars.

On Friday, about 1,000 people from Kabylie converged on the village of Agouni Arous, where Massinissa Guermah, the teenage "martyr" killed at the police station in April 2001, is buried.