[4][5] In 2017, Human Rights Watch reported the Algerian government had increasingly resorted to criminal prosecutions against bloggers, journalists, and media figures for peaceful speech, via articles in the country's penal code criminalising "offending the president", "insulting state officials" and "denigrating Islam", in addition to dismissing peaceful demonstrations as "unauthorised gatherings".
[7] Despite this, Human Rights Watch reported in 2021 that the Algerian government continued to arrest and imprison protestors, activists, and journalists from the Hirak movement, alongside amending the country's constitution to restrict freedom of speech and further curtail judicial independence.
[9] To the extent that there is democracy in today's Algeria, it is founded in three pieces of legislation: Free elections were held in the country beginning in 1988, but a victory by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in the 1991 parliamentary ballot sparked a military coup d'état and the imposition, in February 1992, of a state of emergency under which basic human rights were suspended.
A civil war raged from 1991 to 1999, and since its end there have been no proper official investigations into the massive human-rights violations that took place during the conflict.
[10] The government's main opponent in the war was the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), an Islamic terrorist organization and Al Qaeda affiliate that was described by John R. Schindler in The National Interest in July 2012 as "supremely violent" and as the perpetrator of "a wave of bombings in Paris in the summer of 1995" that were "Al Qaeda's first attacks on the West".
"[11] December 2010 marked the beginning of a period of frequent and nationwide protests inspired by the so-called "Arab Spring" and sparked by widespread anger over high unemployment, a serious housing shortage, high food prices, extensive corruption, and severe restrictions on freedom of expression and other human rights.
[10] The CNCD planned a march in Algiers on January 21, 2011, to demand an end to the state of emergency and a restoration of democracy and freedom.
[10] In April 2019, president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who had been in the role since 1999, resigned following mass protests after he announced his intention to run for a fifth term.
[7] During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in Algeria, public health was used by the government to justify the dispersion of ongoing Hirak protests by implementing a lockdown.
When the lockdown was lifted in June 2020, protests in major Algerian cities were subsequently repressed, leading to riots in Béjaïa.
Although it is unconstitutional, the government monitors the communications of its political opponents, the news media, human-rights organizations, and terrorist suspects.
Pressure is exerted by the government on the news media, largely by arresting journalists for defamation, which is defined broadly and punished harshly under Algerian law.
[5] While congratulating Algeria for lifting the state of emergency in February 2011, Human Rights Watch urged that the government still needed to "restore basic liberties" by amending "numerous repressive laws and end various arbitrary practices that have no legal basis".
[22] In May 2012, HRW complained that the Algerian government had been using "arrests and other tactics to keep people from demonstrating in the capital in the period leading up to the May 10, 2012 elections".
[24] On 2 March 2022, Amnesty International reported that Algerian authorities ramped up their assault on civil society, with 27 human rights defenders and peaceful activists arrested in February.
According to the reports, the authorities have sought to suppress Hirak protests, have arrested hundreds of activists, human rights defenders and journalists, and held them in pretrial detention or sentenced them under vaguely worded charges.
Women have the ability to get a divorce and are usually awarded child custody, although certain decisions about children's lives remain in the father's hands.
[8] The new constitution included within it protections for women from "all forms of violence in all places and circumstances" in addition to the provision of "shelters, care centres, appropriate means of redress and free legal assistance".
[28] Between 2019 and 2021, the Féminicides Algérie platform registered 187 cases of men murdering women in Algeria because of their gender, referred to as femicides.
[31] Human Rights Watch said in its annual report -2015-2016- that Algerian authorities continued to suppress peaceful protests by prohibiting all kind of gatherings held without prior approval.
According to Article 97 of the penal code, organizing or participating in an unauthorized gathering, even if it is peaceful, is regarding a crime and imposes a penalty of up to one year in prison.
In February, a court sentenced eight members of the National Committee for the Defense of the Rights of Unemployed Workers to one-year prison after convicting them of "unauthorized gathering" and "exercising pressure on the decisions of magistrates".
[38] Although Algeria's constitution stipulates that the judiciary is to be independent and provide fair trials, the president has ultimate power over the courts and defendants' rights are not always respected.
[5] In February 2020, Algiers-based prosecutor Mohamed Sid Ahmed Belhadi was transferred to El Oued after calling for 16 Hirak protestors to be acquitted, citing their right to freedom of assembly.
[39] Human Rights Watch complained in June 2012 about the cases of eight terror suspects who had been detained secretly for several years and who faced "trials of questionable fairness because the judges refuse to allow an important witness to testify".
These cases, according to HRW, underscore "the continuing obstacles faced by those charged with terrorist offenses, even after authorities lifted a state of emergency in 2011, to obtaining justice that is both prompt and fair".
In the past, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have both complained that members of radical Islamic groups are treated more harshly in prison than others.
Death of the journalist Mohammed Tamalt, 42, is an example of using the government its power to silence the individuals whose writing insulted the president of republic and the official bodies.
In addition, it showed that detention of a journalist because of his writing criticizing the government and not paying attention to their health are considered as violation of human rights.
Finally, it clarified that the Algerian government imposed restriction on freedom of the press; expression; and right to peaceful demonstration, protest and assembly as well as intensified censorship of the media and websites.