Social media posts lead to arrests in Algeria
Dozens more people have been arrested in Algeria after taking to social media to criticise the Algerian government, according to Middle East Eye on February 14th.
Users have been posting the viral hashtag ‘#Manich_Radhi’, meaning ‘I am not happy, satisfied.’
The hashtag first appeared in the wake of the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria after many in Algeria drew a comparison between the situations of the two countries.
One social media user, Souhil Debbaghi, was arrested at the end of December after posting a video in which he said he was not happy with the state of Algeria.
He also referenced the struggle that many Algerians put themselves through by crossing the Mediterranean in order to escape the country and start a new life in Europe.
According to human rights activist Zaki Hannache, the effects of the hashtag prompted a large response from the authorities, ‘in a few days at the end of December, the number of people arrested exceeded the number of imprisonments for the whole of 2024’.
Despite plans for presidential pardons to be offered out to 2,471 prisoners at the end of last year, only five people were in fact released.
Hannahce claims that these were young people who had not been previously covered in the media.
Even small signs of political dissent are be clamped down on for the regime.
Five years on from the start of the Hirak – a series of peaceful public protests to demand political change and democratic reform from the former Bouteflika government – the Algerian government shuts down any space for civil disobedience.
Mohamed Tadjadit, nicknamed ‘the poet of the Hirak’, was arrested along with thousands of others during the protests.
He was arrested in the 2019 protests but released in 2022.
However, in January 2025 he was sentenced to five years in jail for ‘inciting hatred on social media’ due to his participation in the Manich Radhi social media campaign.
For Algerian civilians, the arrests are a reminder of the lengths the regime will go to hold on to power.
In January 2023, Mary Lawlor, a UN special rapporteur condemned the abuses on the democratic rights and political freedoms of the population.
Whilst the Manich Radhi hashtag has demonstrated the repression of the Algerian regime in all its ugliness, it has also highlighted the fact that a democratic fervour still exists, five years on from the Hirak.
Want to chase the pulse of North Africa? Enter your email address and name to receive our weekly newsletter.
