Iraq protests: unprecedented violence and unjustified arrests

Ali Al-Rasouli - Baghdad

Bloody scenes, detentions without legal justification, and cases of kidnappings continue, highlighting the scene of popular protests in Iraq since the end of the "homeland deadline" last Sunday evening. This comes at a time when the Iraqi authorities have directed their weapons towards demonstrators who are critical of the government and parliament’s neglect of their demands they have been calling for four months ago.

The security services did not stop at this point, but they chased and arrested every demonstrator who cut a road or closed a government department as a means of pressure to implement the demands, after the Iraqi National Security Council authorized the security forces to arrest those who burn tires to cut off roads and main streets.

Perhaps what increased the protesters ’dissatisfaction and pushed them further towards a continuous escalation, is the security forces’ efforts to carry out arrests of children participating in the demonstrations, accused of transporting and burning tires to cut off roads, which sparked a wave of critical reactions.

The organizing committee of the "October Revolution" demonstrations promised that the security forces will criminalize the events, asking whether carrying tires is a criminal offense, and whether or not the Iraqi Penal Code stipulated them?

Tariq Harb, a constitutional law expert, saw that such measures were not related to the Iraqi Penal Code and the constitution as a link, stressing that these actions are illegal and cannot be tolerated.

In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, Harb pointed out that "some of the demonstrators learned from the government forces, so they started attacking everyone on the road with stones, as an expression of their anger and in response to the security forces, which do not improve their behavior and are very harsh in striking them."

The legal expert considered the security forces' treatment of the demonstrators as measures that do not conform to international law, the Iraqi constitution, or even morals and values.

End the protests
What was previously considered by lawyers and jurists a new step to end the protests, as the "national deadline" granted by the demonstrators to the government and parliament to implement their demands met the same policy of excessive violence against protesters.

Since the start of the Iraqi protests in the beginning of last October, more than 600 protesters have been killed and about 27,000 injured, while hundreds of activists have been kidnapped in the demonstration squares, amid the silence applied by the governmental authorities, and the international humanitarian organizations are satisfied with condemnation and condemnation only.

Prospective internationalization
On the authority’s violence, a member of the Iraqi Human Rights Commission, Ali al-Bayati, told Al-Jazeera Net, “If we talk about law enforcement, there is no justification for killing the protester in the street except when absolutely necessary and in self-defense, which must also be preceded by other deterrent measures.”

Al-Bayati pointed out that the authority's argument that unknown parties are killing, has become unacceptable, and considered it an argument condemning the government itself and a recognition of the inability to control security, calling on the head of the caretaker government, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, to "open a transparent investigation into the killing of demonstrators, as an attachment to the investigation of Targeting the US embassy earlier. "

He added that the lack of real Iraqi internal efforts to investigate the murders of the demonstrators, and to prosecute those responsible according to the law, would open the way for more international actors to intervene, given that the issue of sovereignty of any country in international custom depends on providing protection for its citizens.