Several hundred people demonstrated in Baghdad on Sunday to demand "an
end to impunity
" in Iraq, where dozens of opponents and activists have been killed or kidnapped since the popular uprising in October 2019, journalists from AFP.
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Waving Iraqi flags and brandishing portraits of
murdered
"
martyrs
", the demonstrators, including many students who had participated in the 2019 uprising, marched through the center of the capital under heavy police surveillance.
“
No to political parties!
No to the militias!
», They shouted before listening to songs and the reading of a poem by one of the most emblematic activists of 2019, the young artist Safaa Saray, killed by a tear gas grenade received in the head in Tahrir Square, epicenter of the protest in Baghdad.
Since the uprising, suppressed in blood (600 dead, tens of thousands injured), many militants have fled Iraq or have taken refuge in autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, in the north of the country, for fear of reprisals.
The killings and kidnappings of activists have never been claimed, but the demonstrators point the finger at the powerful pro-Iranian militias, essential in Iraq, and are indignant that no one has ever been held to account.
"
In Iraq, you can lie, you can steal, you can kill and get away with it,
" summarizes Mazen ali Chaker, a fifty-year-old economist.
Many protesters were in tears.
A young man, collapsed, crouched down on the pavement, his head in his hands.
"
We want freedom, that's why we started the revolution in 2019, and we won't stop until we get it,
" 18-year-old student Hussein al told AFP. -Feili. "
We want the killings to stop, we want a country liberated from militias and Iranian stranglehold
", for her part launches a young woman, dark glasses and mask on her nose, the only way not to be recognized and risk harm. retaliation, she laughs.
Asked about the Prime Minister's announcement on Friday of the arrest of the killer of the famous Iraqi researcher Hicham al-Hachemi, whose assassination shocked Iraq in July 2020, many demonstrators shrug their shoulders: "
we want the sponsor
», Summarizes Hussein al-Feili.
Dozens of people also demonstrated in Nassiriya, a rebellious southern city, an AFP correspondent noted.
The event was organized by an online campaign “
Stop Impunity in Iraq
”, launched by activists from the diaspora and inside the country.
Small symbolic gatherings were also held in Paris, London or Helsinki, according to videos posted on Twitter by the organization.