Thousands of students on Tuesday joined a growing protest movement in Algeria against ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s bid for a fifth term, with rallies in and around the capital and other cities....
Bouteflika, who uses a wheelchair and has rarely been seen in public since suffering a stroke in 2013, announced on February 10 that he would seek re-election in the April 18 vote.
His decision has sparked angry protests in the North African country, with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets on Friday in Algiers where demonstrations are banned.
The scale of those protests took many in Algeria by surprise, and they were followed by more rallies on Sunday and Monday.
On Tuesday it was the turn of university students to vent their anger at Bouteflika’s bid to extend his 20 years in power.
Around 500 students demonstrated at the University of Algiers, many of them waving Algerian flags and shouting “No to a fifth term” and “Bouteflika get out”.
University guards locked the gates of the main city centre campus to prevent students from spilling onto the streets.
Security forces, including riot police, deployed outside the campus and elsewhere in central Algiers while police vehicles were parked on roads leading to the university.
At the faculty of journalism, some 500 students protested on campus, while another demonstration took place at the school of medicine, also in Algiers, with police blocking them inside the university grounds.
“In order to avoid any confrontation with the police, the students of several faculties (of the University of Algiers) decided to rally on campus,” said Raouf, a journalism student who declined to give his surname.
He noted that police officers are not allowed to enter universities in Algeria.
Groups of students from numerous campuses rallied in different neighbourhoods before joining to form a march of thousands of people in the city centre, an AFP journalist said.
Police at first observed them before firing tear gas grenades when some students pelted them with stones, but the confrontation was short-lived, the reporter said.
Residents offered bottles of water to the students, whose protest concluded calmly mid-afternoon.
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