Thousands of protesters in Iraq shouted slogans against Iran and the United States on Friday, whose recent clashes on Iraqi soil have eclipsed the protest movement against the government.
In Tahrir Square in Baghdad, as in other cities in southern Iraq, thousands of people took to the streets shouting “No to Iran! No to the United States!” in the most massive demonstrations of the last weeks, journalists of the AFP indicated.
For several days, appeals circulated in social networks to resume this Friday, January 10 (10/01) the protest movement that had begun on October 1, 2018 (10/01).
On Friday morning there were clashes between police and protesters in Kerbala (south) as well as several protesters arrested in Basra (south), AFP journalists said.
For more than three months, Iraqis denounce their leaders, whom they accuse of being “incompetent” and “thieves.” According to the Transparency International, Iraq is the twelfth most corrupt country in the world.
For weeks the leaders of Iraq have tried to agree to appoint a substitute for Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, who resigned with his government.
“Resuming the demonstrations we demonstrate our attachment to the demands of the October revolution, that is to say that our leaders stop monopolizing our country’s resources,” Haydar Kazem, a protester in Nasiriyah (south), told AFP.
The movement that began spontaneously was severely repressed by security forces, with some 460 dead (mostly protesters) and more than 25,000 wounded, many of whom were invalid.
Many protesters are also victims of murders, kidnappings and intimidation.
Both the Iraqi government and the security forces are dominated by the Proirani. The parliament demands the exit of the country of the American troops that the pro-Iran factions consider a “force of occupation”.
However, the protesters denounce the influence of Iran and ask above all for better living conditions in this oil country, where one young person in four is unemployed and one in five lives below the poverty line.
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