Iraq

Iraqi security forces have repeatedly beaten and violently dispersed protesters during anti-corruption demonstrations since August 2015 without any apparent justification.

Thousands of protesters had gathered in several towns and cities across Sulaimaniya governorate to demand jobs, payment of back wages, and the resignation of Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and head of the KDP. Two protesters and a third man died in the town of Fort Diza on October 9, and two others, both reported to have been unarmed, died in the town of Kalar on October 10.

In the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan in recent days, many Kurdish media have been attacked in connection with a political crisis, where security forces have closed media outlets in an attempt to suppress criticism of the government.

Several Iraqi provinces have witnessed the violent deaths of political activists and tribal leaders supportive of Iraq’s nation-wide anti-corruption protests. Undaunted by the killings and the government’s apparent inability or unwillingness to respond to them, protesters have vowed to keep demonstrating until their demands are met.

Photojournalist Jala al-Abadi, father of two, is the third journalist to be killed in Iraq this year following the deaths of Iraqi photographer Adnan Abdul Razzaq and reporter Ali Ansari.

Journalist Raed Al-Joubouri’s murder at his Baghdad home last week comes just days after another journalist, Thaer Alali, was publicly killed by ISIS.

RSF made this request in a letter on 16 April to the office of Lithuania’s permanent representative to the United Nations in New York, who will assume the Security Council’s Presidency in May, and in a letter to the UN secretary-general.

Reuters Baghdad bureau chief Ned Parker had to flee the country because of threats by Shiite armed groups over his coverage of their behaviour in the newly liberated city of Tikrit.

The following blog post, written by Iraqi journalist Oday Hatem, details the brutality of Islamic State militants against journalists in Iraq.

ISIS has been steadily strengthening its grip on social media and using the Internet for recruitment and to spread propaganda. These are strong weapons in any war. So who is fighting back?

The family of Kawa Garmyane, a journalist shot dead in Kurdistan in 2013, has vowed to continue the fight for justice after Mahmoud Sangawi, a military commander charged with ordering the killing, was exonerated.

As the US-led international coalition continues its airstrikes in Iraq and northern Syria in a bid to halt the Jihadi advance, Islamic State is stepping up its persecution of journalists, either threatening to kill them, kidnapping them or mistreating those it is already holding.

Islamic State’s Jihadi militants are imposing a news and information dictatorship in the areas they dominate in Iraq and Syria.

The latest victim, a news agency reporter, was shot several times in the head in Mosul.

The gruesome murders of journalists and aid workers by ISIS have ignited a long-overdue international conversation on the particular risks faced by journalists covering the Syrian civil war.

Iraqi lawyer Samira Saleh Al-Naimi was shot at and killed in a plaza in the city of Mosul by an armed group linked to ISIS for describing the damages inflicted to landmarks in Mosul as “barbaric”.