Algerians overwhelmingly approved a peace plan that provides a broad amnesty for Islamic extremists, despite critics' charges it whitewashes past crimes, official referendum results showed yesterday.
Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni said the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation got more than 97 percent of Thursday's vote, a giant win that could further strengthen President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The "no" polled less than 3 percent.
Nearly 80 percent of the more than 18 million eligible voters cast ballots, the minister said. In Khenchla, an eastern town 100km from Algeria's border with Tunisia, 99.95 percent voted.
But the turnout rate was far lower -- just over 11 percent -- in the main towns of Tizi-Ouzou and Bejaia in Kabylie, a restive Berber region east of the capital Algiers where there had been calls to boycott the vote.
The interior minister said the results "reflect Algerians' desire to live in peace and to turn the page of the tragedy that our country has lived through for 15 years."
Critics of Bouteflika's charter, from opposition politicians to human rights groups and families of people who disappeared in Algeria's bloody Islamic insurgency, had predicted it would easily pass, especially given the lack of real debate.
The popular Bouteflika also won a landslide re-election victory last year, five years after taking office following an election tarnished by allegations of fraud.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS