Iraqi military denies killing two Baghdad protesters
The Iraqi military denied killing two people protesting against a cut in state payments to families who took part in a failed southern uprising against Saddam Hussein nearly three decades ago.
Soldiers shot dead the two men on the outskirts of Baghdad on Sunday, local media reported.
They were among a group from Iraq’s mostly Shiite south who were trying to reach the capital’s Green Zone, a government district that is mostly off-limits to ordinary Iraqis.
Military spokesman Yehya Rasoul said buses full of demonstrators were turned away because the passengers were not obeying coronavirus restrictions.
Demonstrators who tried to attack security forces were repelled by the army, without using ammunition and “without a single casualty”, Mr Rasoul said.
“The security forces are committed to preserving the constitutional rights of peaceful demonstrators,” he said.
The Iraqi government makes monthly payments to thousands of southern Shiites, known as the Rafha detainees, under a law to compensate political prisoners from the Saddam era.
They fled Iraq to the town of Rafha in Saudi Arabia after a failed uprising against the dictator in 1991 and were housed at a camp on the border.
The government started making the payments in 2006, with funds going to the original inhabitants of the camp and their descendants, although many had left by the time Saddam was overthrown in 2003.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhimi, who took office in May, reduced the payments to one person in each family instead of each member of a household, sparking an outcry from the Rafha community of 150,000 people.
Mr Al Kadhimi said the reductions were part of measures to curb a soaring budget deficit and combat fraud in salaries and welfare payments.
The southern Iraqi uprising began as the First Gulf War was about to end in February 1991.
Those involved overran southern towns, ousted regime troops and hanged members of Saddam’s Baath party from lamp posts.
Saddam crushed the uprising within weeks and indiscriminate reprisals were carried out.
The current Shiite political establishment, which rose to power after the US invasion that toppled Saddam 12 years later, is also facing mass protests in the south.
But the Rafha demonstrators differ in their goals. They oppose only Mr Al Kadhimi’s decision rather than seeking an overhaul of Iraq’s political system.
Government forces and Iranbacked militias have all but crushed the mass uprising, which began with peaceful demonstrations in October last year, with hundreds of protesters killed.
In December, Iraq’s Higher Judicial Council issued an arrest warrant for an Iraqi commander after dozens of demonstrators were killed in the southern city of Nasiriyah.
But the warrant was not carried out and the commander, Gen Jamil Al Shammari, who is aligned with Iran, remains in the military.