Iraq demos flare up as Baghdad faces renewed pressure

BAGHDAD: Anti-government rallies swelled in Iraq’s capital and south Wednesday as Baghdad faced new pressure from both the street and the United Nations to respond seriously to weeks of demonstrations.

Protests demanding a new leadership have rocked the capital and Shiite-majority south for weeks, the crowds undeterred by government pledges of reform and the deaths of more than 300 people. They dimmed for a few days following a deadly crackdown by security forces in Baghdad and major southern cities but flared again Wednesday with demonstrations by striking students and teachers. “We’re here to back the protesters and their legitimate demands, which include teachers’ rights,” said Aqeel Atshan, a professor on strike in Baghdad’s Tahrir (Liberation) Square, the epicentre of the protest movement. In the southern port city of Basra, around 800 students returned to camp outside the provincial government headquarters days after they had been pushed out by riot police. Schools were also shut in the protest hotspots of Diwaniyah and Nasiriyah. Protesters have felt revived after the country’s top Shiite religious authority Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani said they “cannot go home without sufficient reforms”. “Students, boys and girls alike, are all here for a sit-in,” another demonstrator in Tahrir told AFP. “If Sistani gave the orders for mass civil disobedience, everything would close — the government, the oil companies, everything. That’s how we’ll have a solution.

Iraq’s parliament will meet on Wednesday afternoon to hear from the head of the United Nations’ mission in Iraq (UNAMI), Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert. She will address the main political blocs and brief lawmakers on her meeting with Sistani, who in a significant move backed a UN roadmap out of the crisis. Hennis-Plasschaert’s proposal calls for an immediate end to violence, electoral reform and anti-graft measures within two weeks followed by constitutional amendments and infrastructure legislation within three months. Oil-rich Iraq is ranked the 12th most corrupt country in the world by Transparency International, and youth unemployment stands at 25 percent. Demonstrations erupted on October 1 in fury over a lack of jobs and corruption, initially fracturing the ruling class.