As virus halts protest, Algerians turn to 'Radio Corona'

Algerians stuck in pandemic lockdown and dismayed with their government are tuning into an irreverent online broadcaster that is keeping their protest spirit alive: Radio Corona Internationale. Created in an expatriate’s dining room in the United States, RCI offers a cocktail of political talk, caustic humor and popular music to give listeners rare moments of freedom amid the gloom of confinement. The one-hour show airs live via Facebook on Tuesdays and Fridays, the weekdays when “Hirak” anti-government protesters would take to the streets for the past year until organizers suspended the rallies because of COVID-19.

Its host is well-known Algerian broadcaster Abdellah Benadouda, 49, who fled his homeland in 2014 after falling out with the powerful inner circle around former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika. “I missed the revolution,” says Benadouda with regret, referring to last year’s unprecedented popular uprising that ended the two-decade reign of the ailing leader. Since then, the protests had continued, demanding the wider dismantling of the political “system” that has held a tight grip on the North African country — until the pandemic put a halt to them last month. Benadouda said that ever since the Hirak movement started in February 2019, “only my body is here in Providence,” the capital of the US state of Rhode Island.

The online station is “a way to reinvent the Hirak in the time of confinement,” he said, vowing to keep broadcasting even after the end of the public health crisis that has claimed almost 300 lives in Algeria. Benadouda is a former public radio journalist and presenter of the offbeat news show “Systeme Dz” on the private channel Dzair TV. He left Algeria fearing retribution after a dispute with Dzair TV, which is owned by Ali Haddad, a powerful businessman who was seen as close to the Bouteflika clan and who is now in prison for corruption. —AFP