Friday in Mosul, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's forces began filming the protesters as the photo from Iraqi Spring Media Center documents. It's a surprise only if you don't know what happened in 2011 or what Nouri had been doing all last week.
Thursday Al Mada reported, on Nouri's attempt to use his military on the people. They were following the protesters in Anbar Province and Diyala Province in an attempt to intimidate them as well as find out where they lived. That was the 64th day of continued protest in Iraq. In addition to following protesters, they were also grabbing them and arresting them -- at least 20 in Baquba.
Not only were they attempting to
Nouri tried everything to stop the protests including, as Iraqi Spring MC noted, putting up checkpoints Thursday to prevent people from entering areas in the hopes of defeating the Friday protests.
But Friday saw over three million Iraqis turn out to protest across the country.
In the US, the White House has continued to support thug Nouri. At the State Department, neocon Victoria Nuland (State's spokesperson) has repeatedly treated the protesters as violent. Strange, since the eleven people killed during protests were all protesters who were killed n Falluja January 25th by Nouri's forces. As Human Rights Watch noted earlier this month of that massacre:
Witness statements and media footage indicate that demonstrators threw stones at soldiers and burned an empty army vehicle. Some witnesses said the soldiers could have avoided being harmed without resorting to lethal force. Human Rights Watch spoke with three protesters and a soldier. They offered differing accounts of the clashes, although all agreed that the army fired, hitting members of a crowd of several hundred protesters after the protesters began throwing rocks in the direction of an army checkpoint near the highway.
The protesters said that they outnumbered the soldiers, but threw rocks at the soldiers from a great distance. Witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that although the protesters threw rocks, they were not armed and were not threatening the lives of Iraqi soldiers.
The military is being used against the people. And the US continues selling weapons to thug Nouri.
Zarzis Thomas (Al Mada) reported that Nineveh Province Governor Atheel al-Nujaifi responded to complaints about the way the national forces were treating protesters in Mosul by going down to the protests. After speaking to people and getting names of people who were grabbed by the military, al-Nujaifi attempted to leave but, he states, the federal police attempted to attack his car and his security detail in an attempt to get them to fire guns.
That should alarm the the US government. The whole thing should.
The US is openly supporting a dictator who tramples free speech and turns the military on the people.