Amnesty International called for the signing of a petition directed to Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune to release “prisoners of conscience”.
This came in a tweet by Amnesty International, through its Arabic account on Twitter.
The organization said that “40 detainees entered a mass hunger strike to protest against false accusations against the exercise of their freedom of expression,” which the authorities denied.
According to the tweet, the strikers “demand an end to their arbitrary detention, along the lines of activists Mohammed Tajdit, Abdullah bin Naoum and Malik Al-Rabbahi.”
The organization attached its tweet with a link to its website, on which the petition was placed.
The petition accuses the Algerian authorities of “exploiting the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus to accelerate the crackdown on Hirak activists.”
According to the petition, “Since February 2019, Algeria has been witnessing a peaceful protest movement called by the Hirak movement to demand a radical political change in Algeria, and the protesters have faced repression by the government.”
It added, “Although the activists of the peaceful movement stopped their protests due to the Corona epidemic, the authorities did not suspend their pursuit of the movement’s activists.”
The petition called on the authorities to “stop the arbitrary prosecutions of Hirak activists, and to immediately and unconditionally release all peaceful activists.”
