ALGIERS, 14 February 2005 — Disillusioned youths looted and burned a city hall in a western Algerian town to protest against a lack of housing amid a rise in civil disturbances in the oil-rich country, residents and newspapers said yesterday. Violence erupted after a few hundred inhabitants of Tenira, 400 km west of the capital Algiers, began a protest march after Friday prayers to demand promised government financial aid to buy apartments.
More than a dozen youths were arrested and calm had returned to the town on Saturday, local police told newspaper Liberte. “It is not just about a lack of houses. The youth feel abandoned and nobody listens to them. And unemployment is the only foreseeable future for most of them,” said a resident who asked not to be identified.
Demonstrations have been illegal in the North African country since a state of emergency law was put in force in 1992 to combat a rebel uprising. Authorities are struggling to quell a wave of riots in towns across Algeria over the past month. Residents are increasingly demanding better living conditions as the price of cooking oil, food products and petrol rise and the government fails to deliver on a promise to fix a chronic shortage of apartments.
“Riots show the extent to which our politicians have failed. What is the job of a Parliament member? Ask rioters and you will be astonished about the gap existing between them and those who are supposed to represent them,” said Mahmoud Belhimer, editor and professor at Algiers university.
