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Algeria: Dissolution of the Raj, a 30-Year-Old Pro-democracy Group

Algerian authorities on Thursday disbanded a decades-old pro-democracy group that took part in the peaceful protests that helped force the North African country’s longtime president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, out of office in 2019.

The Youth Action Group, known by its French acronym RAJ , and the left-wing Movement for Democracy and Socialism party, which was also suspended by the same decree, appear to be the latest targets of the crackdown on dissenting voices. in Algeria.

Algeria’s Council of State has declared that the RAJ has been dissolved in accordance with an October 2021 administrative court decision in favor of legal action by the Ministry of the Interior. The ministry had alleged that the group was “gathering forces to destabilize the country ” and carried out other activities that violated a controversial 2012 law on non-governmental groups.

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RAJ leaders have repeatedly denied the government’s allegations and said authorities under Bouteflika’s successor, President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, have reneged on their promises to reform the power structure which under Bouteflika was marked by corruption and the pervasive shadow of repression.

International human rights organizations have urged Tebboune to scrap the 2012 law passed by the Bouteflika regime that governs the activities of NGOs – and which also covers professional associations.

In a joint statement released earlier this month, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said the law was ” highly restrictive and inconsistent with international standards on freedom of association.”

The two watchdogs also called on the Algerian authorities to reverse the decision to dissolve the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights, or LADDH, and to “put an end to the general repression of independent civil society organizations .”_

The Algiers administrative court dissolved the LADDH in June 2022 following a complaint filed by the Interior Ministry, the organization said in January after reading the verdict on its fate on the internet.

On Wednesday, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, or GI-TOC, said in a statement that one of its researchers in Algeria, Raouf Farrah, was arrested and charged in court “for disseminating information from of classified documents.”

The organization said Raouf Farrah and his 67-year-old father, who was also arrested, were charged along with seven other people in the northeastern city of Constantine during a hearing held on the night of February 20. Raouf Farrah was also accused of “receiving funds for the purpose of committing acts aimed at disturbing public order”, said the organization, which called the accusations “totally unfounded”.

โ€œThere is nothing confidential or harmful to the Algerian state in the research (widely) published by Farrah,โ€ said the organization, which urged the authorities to release him.

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