Kidnapping activists and social workers is not something new in Iraq. In December 2016, journalist Afrah Shawqi was kidnapped for a week and then released. While the Ministry of Interior said it had leads on the culprits, it was unable to identify and capture the kidnappers.
Since September 2015, the whereabouts and fate of activist Jalal al-Shahmani, who was abducted from the Waziriya district in Baghdad, are still unknown. The government and the security forces ignored the Shahmani case.
On May 11, the seven released activists, along with a group of other civil activists, held a press conference, calling upon Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to “assure the civil community and the Iraqis in general that the government and its security apparatuses are able to protect their people, restrict the loose armed groups and take strict measures to limit the weapons in the hands of the state.”
They also called on the interior minister and the Baghdad Operations Command “to bring the kidnappers to justice, put an end to all armed groups inside the cities and deal with kidnapping crimes as major terrorist crimes.”
Activists also called upon the “president, prime minister, speaker of the parliament and all political forces in the country to denounce the systematic campaign led by extremists to target activists.”
Indeed, activists and journalists feel they are facing a systematic campaign aimed at silencing them and preventing them from calling for reform of the Iraqi situation, which is suffering from security and economic deterioration, and hit by a major political imbalance represented by the sectarian quotas management system in the country’s political institutions.
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