Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

10
Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Özeti
PATRICK COCKBURN
MARCH 5, 2013
The Sunni rise again: Uprising in Syria
emboldens Iraq's minority community
When Saddam fell, his people fell with him. But events in Syria have emboldened Iraq’s
Sunni minority to fight for a greater share of power
“
IRAQ OR MALIKI! Iraq or Maliki!”
shout Sunni Arab demonstrators 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
leadership 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
demonstrators 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 leadership
role, instructed that these symbols of
Sunni supremacy should be dropped and
substituted with slogans acceptable to the
Shia. Mr Saadi issued a fatwa condemning
“regionalism”, which is the code for a
semi-independent Sunni region, a
demand 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
defeat.”
The new direction of Sunni opposition
has met with a positive response.
Muqtada al-Sadr, the nationalist populist
Shia cleric, once dreaded by Sunni as the
inspiration for the death squads of the
Mehdi Army Shia militia, supported the
protests, saying: “Iraq is not only composed
of Shia, but Sunnis, Kurds,
Turkmen, Christians, Mandeans 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 deep over an anti-terrorism law
that allows detention without trial of a
suspect on the word of an unidentified
informer. Sheikh Qassim al-Kerbuli, a
leader in the Sunni heartland province of
Anbar, says: “I know a Sunni teacher in
Baghdad who threw a Shia student out of
an examination because he caught him
cheating. The student 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 detainees is habitual,
leading to false confessions and long
prison sentences. This is not confined to
Sunni, but they are most frequently targeted
for abuse. “When the security forces
arrest someone they torture them with
electricity,” says Nazar Abdel 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 demonstrators are enraged over
women being detained for long
periods by the security forces because
their male relatives are under 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
demonstration
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 depend on
confessions from those arrested under the
anti-terrorism law so they always use torture
on them.” He says that when he
asked why prisoners had been detained
without charge for so long they say “they
are still looking for evidence 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 getting a fair share of jobs and projects
to provide 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 ➡