Algeria: 32 protesters arrested over jobs rally
Police forces on Sunday arrested roughly 32 unemployed people as they prepared to rally against joblessness near the presidential compound of El Mouradia in upper Algiers.
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Larabi, spokesman for the unemployment rights group CNDCC, said he was subsequently released but 25 of his colleagues were still held at various police stations.
- The group had called the rally to demand more jobs, improved unemployment benefits and the right to demonstrate freely for their legitimate rights.
- Algerian police on Wednesday briefly detained 17 people as they prepared to hold a rally commemorating the anniversary of the pro-democracy protests of October 5th 1988.
- Algeria, a country of 35 million people, has an unemployment rate of 11 percent, according to the World Bank.
- Meanwhile, some 50 teachers who lost their jobs after their short-term contracts expired, launched a hunger strike outside a ministry of education building Sunday, demanding that they be reinstated.
- Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia had in March ordered the education ministry to make teachers’ contracts permanent but this excluded those without a graduate degree.