Revue <strong>de</strong> Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro <strong>de</strong> la Prensa-Basin Oz<strong>et</strong>i Mercredi 6 mars 2013 Les rebelles syriens prennent le contrôle <strong>de</strong> la ville <strong>de</strong> Raqqa, dans le nord du pays La prise <strong>de</strong>s insurgés pondère les succès revendiqués auparavant par le régime <strong>de</strong> Bachar Al-Assad i Lattaquié .6
10 Revue <strong>de</strong> Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro <strong>de</strong> la Prensa-Basin Öz<strong>et</strong>i PATRICK COCKBURN MARCH 5, 2013 The Sunni rise again: Uprising in Syria embol<strong>de</strong>ns Iraq's minority community When Saddam fell, his people fell with him. But events in Syria have embol<strong>de</strong>ned Iraq’s Sunni minority to fight for a greater share of power “ IRAQ OR MALIKI! Iraq or Maliki!” shout Sunni Arab <strong>de</strong>monstrators as they block roads in western Iraq in protest against Prime Minister Nouri al- Maliki and discrimination against their community. Demonstrations by Sunni, in their tens of thousands, began with the arrest of the bodyguards of a Sunni politician on 20 December and are still continuing. For the first time since 2003 the Sunni – one fifth of the 33 million Iraqi population – are showing signs of unity and intelligent lea<strong>de</strong>rship as they try to escape political marginalisation in a country ruled since the fall of Saddam Hussein by the Shia majority in alliance with the Kurds. In the first days of the protests, Sunni <strong>de</strong>monstrators held up pictures of Saddam Hussein and waved the old regime’s version of the Iraqi flag. This changed when a revered Sunni scholar, Abdul-Malik al-Saadi, taking a lea<strong>de</strong>rship role, instructed that these symbols of Sunni supremacy should be dropped and substituted with slogans acceptable to the Shia. Mr Saadi issued a fatwa con<strong>de</strong>mning “regionalism”, which is the co<strong>de</strong> for a semi-in<strong>de</strong>pen<strong>de</strong>nt Sunni region, a <strong>de</strong>mand which, if granted, would mean the break up of Iraq. He appealed instead for Sunni and Shia unity against the Maliki government. A Shia political observer noted that “they are aware that without winning over the Shia south of the country they face isolation and <strong>de</strong>feat.” The new direction of Sunni opposition has m<strong>et</strong> with a positive response. Muqtada al-Sadr, the nationalist populist Shia cleric, once drea<strong>de</strong>d by Sunni as the inspiration for the <strong>de</strong>ath squads of the Mehdi Army Shia militia, supported the protests, saying: “Iraq is not only composed of Shia, but Sunnis, Kurds, Turkmen, Christians, Man<strong>de</strong>ans and Jews as well.” This cross-sectarian appeal by the Sunni makes it more difficult, but not impossible for Mr Maliki to play the sectarian card in upcoming local and parliamentary elections this year. The Sunni have a lot to complain about. Anger is <strong>de</strong>ep over an anti-terrorism law that allows <strong>de</strong>tention without trial of a suspect on the word of an uni<strong>de</strong>ntified informer. Sheikh Qassim al-Kerbuli, a lea<strong>de</strong>r in the Sunni heartland province of Anbar, says: “I know a Sunni teacher in Baghdad who threw a Shia stu<strong>de</strong>nt out of an examination because he caught him cheating. The stu<strong>de</strong>nt told the security forces the teacher was a terrorist and he is now in prison.” Worse things can and do happen in prison. Torture of <strong>de</strong>tainees is habitual, leading to false confessions and long prison sentences. This is not confined to Sunni, but they are most frequently targ<strong>et</strong>ed for abuse. “When the security forces arrest someone they torture them with electricity,” says Nazar Ab<strong>de</strong>l Hamid from Fallujah, who is helping organise the protests. “They are hung up by their hands or forced to sit on a broken bottle.” The <strong>de</strong>monstrators are enraged over women being <strong>de</strong>tained for long periods by the security forces because their male relatives are un<strong>de</strong>r suspicion, but cannot be found. Sheikh Kerbuli says “I know of one woman who has been held for six years because her husband was seen with a suspicious-looking black bag. Nobody knows what was in the bag but he escaped, so they took away his wife instead.” Such stories are confirmed by human rights activists who have visited prisons. Pascale Warda, a former minister and one of the heads of the Hammurabi Human A Sunni protesterat an anti-government <strong>de</strong>monstration in Fallujah Rights Organisation, visited the women’s prison in Baghdad last year. She says “there were 414 inmates of whom 169 had been arrested but not sentenced. Our team saw traces of torture at the time of the investigation. Some women prisoners had been raped, usually when they were being moved from the place where they were being investigated to the prison.” The accusation of rape caused outrage when a government supporter claimed the women had been paid to make the allegation. William Warda, Pascale’s husband, who also belongs to the Hammurabi Human Rights Organisation, says the authorities “always <strong>de</strong>pend on confessions from those arrested un<strong>de</strong>r the anti-terrorism law so they always use torture on them.” He says that when he asked why prisoners had been <strong>de</strong>tained without charge for so long they say “they are still looking for evi<strong>de</strong>nce against them after three or four years.” Sunni grievances are much more extensive than false imprisonment and mistreatment. They feel they have been reduced to the status of second class citizens, discriminated against when it comes to g<strong>et</strong>ting a fair share of jobs and projects to provi<strong>de</strong> electricity, water and healthcare. They see anti-Ba’athist legislation, supposedly directed against leading members of the Ba’ath Party that ruled Iraq from 1968 to 2003, as a sectarian weapon used to take away the jobs and pensions of Sunni teachers and minor civil servants. Ghassan al-Atiyyah, a political scientist and activist, says he visited a teacher in the Sunni district of ➡
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