In Iraq, Ayatollah Sistani calls on the authorities to protect the demonstrators

Text by: RFI Follow

In Iraq, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the highest religious authority of Shiite Islam in the country, urges the authorities to protect peaceful demonstrators. For four months, protesters have occupied public space to denounce a corrupt and incompetent power. And for four months they have been violently repressed. This Friday the Governmental Human Rights Commission comes out of its silence. She presents a macabre assessment: since the beginning of the movement, there have been nearly 550 dead and no less than 30,000 injured.

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In Iraq the sermons of the religious follow one another and look alike. Almost every Friday in their preaching, the Shiite authorities call for calm, restraint and to protect the demonstrators, but the repression remains as bloody as ever.

The country is divided, fragmented. It is the reign of the militias. They plunge Iraq into a climate of terror.

The demonstrators hostile to the power and the foreign powers which intervene in the country accuse these armed groups to be in the pay of Iran. And it is therefore also to protest against Tehran's grip on Iraq that the street remains mobilized.

Another demand of the demonstrators: the resignation of the new Prime Minister. But Mohamed Allawi is now supported by the powerful leader Moqtada Sadr. Formerly, he and his supporters, nicknamed "the blue caps", supported popular protest, but they turned around; going so far as to violently attack the demonstrators whom they now accuse of being no more and no less than mere thugs who want to destabilize the country.

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• Iraq

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