Iraqis: ‘We want to breathe, too’
BAGHDAD: Seventeen years after US troops invaded their country and eight months since protests engulfed their cities, Iraqis are sending solidarity, warnings and advice to demonstrators across America. Whether in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square or on Twitter, Iraqis are closely watching the unprecedented street protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died in Minneapolis as a police officer knelt on his neck. “I think what the Americans are doing is brave and they should be angry, but rioting is not the solution,” said Yassin Alaa, a scrawny 20-yearold camped out in Tahrir.
Only a few dozen Iraqis remain in tents in the capital’s main protest square, which just months ago saw security forces fire tear gas and live bullets at demonstrators, who shot back with rocks or occasionally Molotov cocktails. Violence left more than 550 people dead, but virtually no one has been held accountable - mirroring a lack of accountability over deaths
at the hands of security forces in the US, Iraqis say. Now, they want to share their lessons learned. “Don’t set anything on fire. Stay away from that, because the police will treat you with force right from the beginning and might react unpredictably,” Alaa said. And most importantly, he insisted, stick together. “If blacks and whites were united and they threw racism away, the system can never stop them,” he said.
Common ‘injustice’
Across their country, Iraqis spotted parallels between the roots of America’s protests and their own society. “In the US it’s a race war, while here it’s a war of politics and religion,” said Haider Kareem, 31, who protested often in Tahrir and whose family lives in the US. “But the one thing we have in common is the injustice we both suffer from,” he told AFP. Iraq has its own history of racism, particularly against a minority of Afro-Iraqis in the south who trace their roots back to East Africa. In 2013, leading Afro-Iraqi figure Jalal Thiyab was gunned down in the oil-rich city of Basra - but discrimination against the community is otherwise mostly non-violent. “Our racism is different than America’s racism,” said Ali Essam, a 34-year-old Afro-Iraqi who directed a wildly popular play about Iraq’s protests last year. — AFP