Is the UK making ‘the same blunder’ in Algeria that France did in Tunisia, asks Lakhdar Ghettas. The British government should strengthen its relationship with the Algerian people, rather than doing business with a regime engaged in ‘fake reform measures’, Ghettas argues.

On 11 June and 2-3 July 2011 ‘punitive’ night raids were carried out against women in the southern city of M’sila, Algeria. Considered to be ‘potential prostitutes’ by their neighbours because they live alone, and under the pretext of the defense of morality, hundreds of youth have burnt down the houses of women who barely escaped being lynched. The police did not intervene.

Recently a press conference was held in Algeria where the Observatory on Violence Against Women condemned the lax manner with which the public authorities react to these punitive raids: ‘What we are denouncing is the absence of the state to the point where every individual can take the law into their own hands and find a pretext in the defense of morality to make an attempt on the lives of women.’

Please follow to read more and to sign a petition addressed to the Algerian authorities.

A French statement about these raids is available here.

Fifty young economists, academics and businesspeople called an Algiers press conference on Saturday (9 July) to unveil '100 Measures for a New Algeria'. It was the symbolic date of 5 July, however, that 'Nabni' ('Our Algeria Built on New Ideas') selected to announce the recommendations. The group hopes to implement the proposals, drafted after two months of deliberations, before next years' independence decennial.

Algeria has witnessed unprecedented unrest in the past few months. Since the beginning of this year, law enforcement officers have carried out no fewer than 2,777 riot control operations. A record was set in March, when more than 70 rallies and sit-ins were staged. In response, the government has issued calls for dialogue, bowed to demands for pay hikes and promised greater political freedom.

In an enigmatic U-turn, Algeria's political parties now support presidential term limits, just three years after they fought tooth and nail to defend the idea of an indefinite term for the chief executive. 'Algeria cannot stand aloof from globalisation and the systems applied in most countries, namely limitation of terms of office,' the National Liberation Front (FLN) said during a meeting of its Central Committee on Sunday (5 June) in Algiers. The majority of Algeria's political organisations, whether among the opposition or close to the government – Islamist, republican and secular – now advocate a return to the principle of limited terms of office as enshrined in previous Algerian constitutions.

While 50 years have passed since Algeria achieved independence from France, Algerians still lack a cohesive historical narrative of their past, writes Smaïl Goumeziane. Though fraught with difficulty, working towards such a history would go some way towards challenging ‘wars of memory’ and ‘selective amnesia’, Goumeziane stresses.

With many sectors of Algerian society profoundly disaffected with the record of Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s government and their prospects, the time for the authorities to effect genuine political reform is running out, writes Lakhdar Ghettas.

In contrast to its North African neighbours, Algeria has yet to see sustained mass protests from a broad base of its population. Imad Mesdoua discusses why this is the case.

Algerian contract teachers clashed with law officers on Monday (28 March) near the Presidential Palace in El Mouradia, Tout sur l'Algerie reported. At least 15 teachers were injured, according to National Council of Higher Education Teachers (CNES) spokesperson Mériem Maarouf. For more than a week, the teachers had been staging a peaceful sit-in to demand a status change.

The late-February lifting of the state's emergency powers law hasn't helped the women who keep a weekly vigil here for relatives who disappeared in the country's 1992-2001 civil war. 'We are prevented from demonstrating, we are still under surveillance and each time we try to march police violently shove us around and flood us with vulgarities,' said Amel Boucherf. For years she and other women whose relatives disappeared during the war have convened at the same place: the headquarters of the National Advisory Commission for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights.

Police in Algeria's capital have used teargas to disperse a crowd of young men who threw stones and petrol bombs to try to stop bulldozers demolishing dozens of illegally built homes. Wednesday's (23 March) riot was unusually violent and took place at a time when Algerian authorities are wary of any sign of contagion from the unrest elsewhere in the Arab world. A police spokesman said 50 officers were injured in the clashes. Reporters on the spot said the demonstrators replied with iron bars and stones.

Organisation errors by the protest movement and clever manoeuvres by the government are strongly challenging the pro-democracy protests in Algeria. It is unsure when new protests will be held. In February, a newly formed National Coordination for Change and Democracy (CNCD) took charge of the protest movement, strongly inspired by the successes of protesters in Tunisia and Egypt. One month later, the CNCD shows strong signs of weakness and fragmentation and is unable to gather large crowds to what was supposed to become weekly, or even daily, mass protests.

Algeria's government has adopted a draft order to lift the country's 19-year-old state of emergency, the official APS news agency reports. It says the measure will come into force after its publication in the official gazette, which is expected 'imminently'. It did not elaborate.

Algerian students staged a two-day sit-in last week outside the higher education ministry in Algiers in order to demand that authorities not lessen the value of their degrees under a new system. The sit-in, which ended on Thursday (17 February), sought greater prestige for engineering degrees by granting them the same status as a Level 2 masters degree, enabling students who hold them to progress to PhD studies.

The Algerian government has said it will end its 19-year-old state of emergency 'within days'. Mourad Medelci, the foreign minister, made the announcement on Monday, echoing a similar promise made by Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the president, earlier this month. A state of emergency has been in place in Algeria since 1992 and the government has come under pressure to remove the laws following popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.

Algeria needs to invest up to 120 billion dollars in renewable energy between now and 2030 to meet the goals of a new energy policy adopted by the council of ministers on Friday (February 4th), experts said. The investment needs to come from both the public and private sector, in addition to contributions by foreign partners, energy consultant Khaled Boukhlifa explained at an El Moudjahid forum on Sunday (6 February).

Algeria's 19-year state of emergency will be lifted in the 'very near future', state media has quoted Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the president, as saying. During a meeting with ministers on Thursday, the president also said Algerian television and radio, which are controlled by the state, should give airtime to all political parties.

Algeria launched the Maghreb Digital Library on 23 January in an effort to expand access to information. The initiative was part of a joint endeavour between the Algerian Ministry of Higher Education and US-based NGO Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF). The Maghreb Digital Library will help the University of Algiers open to the scientific field through different partnerships; something that would give the sector access to technological media that provide researchers with information and documents needed in their work.

Algerian police have broken up an anti-government demonstration by about 300 people in the centre of the capital, Algiers, calling for greater freedoms. Several protesters were injured and a number are reported to have been arrested. Seven police officers were also hurt, according to state media. The leader of the opposition Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD) said those held included its parliamentary leader.

During the night of Wednesday, 5 January, young people took to the streets in the Algiers neighborhoods of Bab El Oued, Climat de France and Rais Hamidou to shout their anger at a socio-economic situation characterised by a high cost of living and unprecedented misery in such a rich country. Several other cities in the country also saw rioting, especially Oran, located west of Algiers, where young people ransacked several public buildings. The riots continued in other towns: Akbou and Tazmalt in Kabylie. This post from Global Voices contains links to commentary from bloggers about the protests, and a video showing some of the protest action.