Five thousand people gathered in the town of Kherrata, Bejaia Province to mark the second anniversary of the Hirak protest movement. Demonstrations had been suspended because of the COVID-19 pandemic in Algeria.

Kherrata is a commune in northern Algeria in the Béjaïa Province.

The Béjaïa Province is a province of Algeria in the Kabylie region. With a population of 984,050 inhabitants in 2019, with a density of 305 km². The province's capital city is Béjaïa, the terminus of the Béni Mansour-Bejaïa line.

The 2019–2021 Algerian protests, also called Revolution of Smiles or Hirak, began on 16 February 2019, six days after Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced his candidacy for a fifth presidential term in a signed statement. These protests, without precedent since the Algerian Civil War, were peaceful and led the military to insist on Bouteflika's immediate resignation, which took place on 2 April 2019. By early May, a significant number of power-brokers close to the deposed administration, including the former president's younger brother Saïd, had been arrested.

The COVID-19 pandemic in Algeria was a part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The virus was confirmed to have spread to Algeria in February 2020. In response, the Algerian government ordered curfews, restricted gatherings, canceled public events, and issued stay-at-home orders between February and June. Some measures were re-implemented in later months in response to new waves of infections. A mass vaccination campaign against COVID-19 began in January 2021. The pandemic disrupted anti-government protests, which largely halted in 2020 and resumed in 2021. 6,881 deaths were officially recorded by the Algerian government through 2022, although the World Health Organization estimated over 21,000 deaths had occurred through 2021.