The rally was called in response to the killing of some 80 young people by the police over the course of a week of protests in Kabylia, located in the northeast of the country. Widespread demonstrations were sparked by the death of an 18-year-old Berber high school student April 18 while in police custody.

"We're here to pay homage to the victims of the repression in Kabylia and to make sure it never happens again," stated one student demonstrator at the May 3 action to a Reuters reporter.

Prior to the start of the demonstration, some 3,000 students, according to witnesses, also marched. They chanted "government, murderers, gendarmes, criminals" in Arabic and in French.

The protests that had swept through the five provinces of the Kabylia region faced massive police repression. The May 5 Economist noted, "The streets of the two regional capitals, Tizi Ouzou and Bejaia, turned into battle zones as young men clashed with the riot police. In towns and villages throughout the region, protesters attacked and destroyed government buildings and tried to overrun police stations." Barricades were set up on the roads linking Tizi Ouzou to Algiers.

The demonstrators are demanding withdrawal of the gendarmerie from the region and backing for their long-standing demand for including the Berbers' Tamazight language alongside Arabic as one of Algeria's official languages. Berbers comprise 30 percent of Algeria's 30 million people.

Many of those killed in the sustained protests were shot with live ammunition by the police. Hospital workers said some of those killed and injured were shot in the back. According to official government figures, in addition to those killed, 484 civilians and 388 police and gendarmes were injured in the clashes.

Clashes broke out again May 3 between young Berbers and the cops. In Bejaia, the police threw tear gas canisters near the university to prevent hundreds of students from marching into the center of the city. Fearing the spread of the protests beyond the Kabylia area, the cops a few days earlier forced student demonstrators in Algiers organizing solidarity demonstrations to remain inside the university campus.

The Kabylia region "is the country's most politicised region," stated the Economist, and "had been chafing at the authority of the central government ever since the early years of Algeria's independence in the 1960s, always pressing to have the Berber language and culture recognised."

The massive response to the police repression forced the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), a smaller Berber-based party, to withdraw its two ministers from the coalition government of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.  
 
Roots of protest
"The radicalised Kabyle-youth" commented the Financial Times, "were protesting against repression and social deprivation and appeared to have little faith in their political representation."

Some 30 percent of Algeria's population is unemployed and nearly one-quarter of the population is living below the official poverty level, as defined by the government. With an annual Gross Domestic Product of $48 billion, the country is saddled with a $30 billion foreign debt owed to banks in the imperialist centers.

According to a CNN report, "more than 1,000 public enterprises had gone bankrupt and 50 percent of industrial jobs had disappeared during 20 years of disinvestments in Algeria." Hoping to head off further social unrest, the government announced plans to launch a $26 billion public works program, which Interior Minister Noureddine Zerhouni said is mainly aimed at attracting foreign investment.

Bouteflika was elected president in December 1999 with strong backing from the military. He has been presiding over a civil war in the country that since 1992 has resulted in the killing of more than 100,000 people. This conflict began when Paris, the country's former colonial ruler, collaborated with the regime in Algiers to annul the national elections won by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), a bourgeois opposition party that promised to be less subservient to the French imperialists. After a military junta took control in Algeria, Paris supplied the new regime with attack helicopters and other war materiel.

Workers and farmers in Algeria have a tradition of militant struggle. Over an eight-year period from 1954–62 they successfully waged a revolutionary war for independence from French colonial rule. As a result of this victorious struggle, a workers and farmers government came to power in 1963 under the leadership of Ahmed Ben Bella of the National Liberation Front (FLN). However, two years later a right-wing grouping within the FLN carried out a military coup, overthrowing the political rule of the workers and farmers.

In response to the latest protests and police repression in Algeria, French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine announced to the country's National Assembly May 2, "We cannot remain silent in the face of such events and in light of the violence to crush" the demonstrations.

However, while French officials were piously proclaiming their opposition to violence and brutality in Algeria, the media was carrying a major story about a newly published book that details the torture, assassinations, and death squads organized by the French rulers against Algerians fighting French colonial rule in the 1950s.

In the book entitled, Special Services: Algeria 1955-57, Gen. Paul Aussaresses, now 83, recounts instances of summary executions by the military brass against these independence fighters. Describing one of these experiences in 1955, Aussaresses writes, "We took a hundred odd prisoners who were killed on the spot."

The author also details how knowledge about these activities were known and backed at the highest political level. He writes, "As for torture, it was tolerated if not recommended. François Mitterrand, the justice minister, in fact had an emissary with Massu (the general in charge of Algiers) in the person of Jean Bérard who covered for us and knew exactly what was going on at night (in the torture center). I had the best possible relations with him and hid nothing from him." Some 1 million Algerians were killed during the course of the eight-year war for independence.  
 
 
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