France urged Algeria on Friday to respect the right to peaceful demonstrations and free expression after Algerian police stopped an opposition march this week ahead of presidential elections, according to the Associated Press.
About 100 Algerian activists from a new anti-government movement staged a rare protest Saturday against the ailing president and his decision to run for a fourth term, the AP reported.
While there was a heavy police presence, officers didn't violently disperse the young protesters from the "Barakat!" (Enough) group like they did in similar demonstrations earlier this month, according to the AP.
Large-scale protests are rare in Algeria where an elite of National Liberation Front party veterans and army intelligence generals, known as "The Power", has called the shots since independence from France in 1962, the AP reported.
Algerian police prevented opposition leaders from marching on Wednesday to demand a boycott of April's election, in which President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is seeking a fourth term despite questions about his capacity after suffering a stroke last year, according to the AP.
Last week, the police also prevented a movement called Barakat, a small group of protesters including journalists, from marching in the capital Algiers to call for a boycott, the AP reported.
"We would like freedom of the press and expression to be respected in Algeria," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said, according to the AP. "The right to demonstrate peacefully is part of the fundamental freedoms and we hope that basic freedoms are respected in Algeria like anywhere else in the world."
Many Algerians are wary of any political instability, with memories of civil war with Islamist fighters in the 1990s still fresh. More than 200,000 people died in that conflict, the AP reported.
Relations between France and Algeria remain complicated after the bloody war of independence half a century ago, meaning that Paris rarely publicly comments on the internal situation in its former colony, according to the AP.
