THOUSANDS MAIMED IN IRAQ
Mounting protest casualties add to millions already disabled by wars
AFRACTURED spine, paralysed leg, hole in the back: Hamza took to the streets of Iraq’s capital here to demand a better life, but now, he has even less than ever.
“This is my sacrifice for Iraq,” said the 16-year-old, his strained voice barely audible over the phone here.
“If I could walk, I would be back in the protests now.”
Hamza is one of at least 3,000 people who have been maimed here and in southern Iraq since anti-government protests erupted on Oct 1, according to the NGO Iraqi Alliance for Disabilities Organisation (IADO).
The staggering number is the latest burden for a country struggling with one of the highest disability rates in the world, according to the United Nations.
After decades of back-to-back conflicts, Iraq is in the thick of its largest and deadliest grassroots protest movement, with more than 300 people dead and 15,000 wounded.
To disperse protesters, security forces have used tear gas, rubber bullets, flash bangs, live rounds and even machine-gun fire — all of which can seriously maim or even kill, as Hamza learned.
On Nov 4, the teenager was among around 20 protesters wounded by live fire here.
A bullet pierced Hamza’s stomach and exited through his back, leaving a gaping hole.
Two others hit his legs.
By the time he arrived at a hospital, he had lost litres of blood and his heart was failing, said his father, Abu Layth.
Doctors revived the boy with a defibrillator, injected him with four units of blood and rushed him into surgery.
“He was basically dead. The doctors brought him back to life,” his father said.
CT scans and medical reports shared by Hamza’s family revealed multiple fractures to his lower spine, leading to paralysis in his right leg. The teenager has gone back home and is on steady doses of anaesthetics.
“Sometimes he screams from pain at night.”
Iraq has a long history of bloody conflict. Each war has killed tens of thousands and left more people impaired for life.
The government’s Central Statistical Organisation says in the wake of decades of conflict, more than two million of Iraq’s 40-million population are disabled people entitled to state support. But IADO and other groups say the real number is more than three million — and counting.
“The number of disabled people continues to grow. We exit one crisis and enter another,” said IADO head Muwafaq al-Khafaji.
He said his group’s estimate of 3,000 maimed since Oct 1 was an approximation, as the government was either not documenting or releasing precise figures.
To fill the gap, IADO members have been contacting hospitals and reaching out to families here and in southern cities.
Although Iraq is party to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, disabled people suffer from poor health services, lack of job opportunities and social exclusion.
Medics have had to sever limbs to save protesters’ lives, said Farah, a 19-year-old medical student volunteering in the main protest camp of Tahrir (Liberation) Square here.
Tahrir is full of makeshift clinics treating protesters, including Ali, 30, who wears a bandage where his right eye should be.
On the night of Oct 24, the father of four was on a bridge when he heard shots ring out and saw hundreds of protesters scrambling in panic.
Before he could do the same, a flash bang exploded at his feet and he collapsed, regaining consciousness an hour later in a hospital. But Ali could only open his left eye, as his other had been lost to a piece of shrapnel.
“They want to deter protesters, but we’re becoming more determined,” he said, as crowds of bandaged men walked around him.
“The Iraqi people have endured everything. We were born to die.”