Last Tuesday, Nouri al-Maliki's federal forces stormed a sit-in in Hawija, Kirkuk. Alsumaria noted Kirkuk's Department of Health (Hawija is in Kirkuk) announced 50 activists have died and 110 were injured in the assault. Iraqi Spring MC offered photos of Wednesday's funerals.
Others weren't so sure how to respond apparently.
For Arthur Bright (Christian Science Monitor), the dead were something to smear. For Kevin Drum (Mother Jones), the dead were an excuse to rehash his sexual attraction to and frustration with Bully Boy Bush. Others just played silent.
NPR aired no segment about it on any of their news magazines and The Diane Rehm Show couldn't even mention it on their 'international hour' Friday.
Already taking deep hits for the crap the US chapter has pulled over the last years, Amnesty International stayed silent. Human Rights Watch stood alone among western organizations in condemning the attacks:
Iraqi authorities should ensure that a promised investigation into a deadly raid on April 23, 2013, in Haweeja, near Kirkuk, examines allegations that security forces used excessive and lethal force. Government statements said armed men at a protest sit-in fired on security forces, killing three soldiers, but local sources and media reports said security forces attacked demonstrators without provocation, killing dozens of people. The government put the death toll at 27.
On April 23, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced the formation of a special ministerial committee to investigate the deaths. The government had previously announced investigations into killings by security forces of protesters in Fallujah and Mosul in January and March, but has so far not released any results nor has anyone been publicly held to account.
“The Iraqi authorities shouldn’t respond to the killings in Haweeja by once again failing to hold security forces responsible for unlawful killings of demonstrators,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Turning a blind eye to previous abuses has helped create the violent environment that today threatens to escalate across Iraq.”
The sit-in, local sources told Human Rights Watch, comprised around 1,000 people from Haweeja protesting what they characterized as the government’s unfair treatment of Sunnis. The protest, in “Sahat al-Ghira wa al-Sharaf” (“Pride and Honor” Square), began more than three months ago. There were no reports of earlier violence between protesters and security forces, who had surrounded the square since April 19, following an attack on a government checkpoint.
Sheikh Saadoun Findi al-Obeidi, one of the sit-in’s organizers, was not in the square during the raid but told Human Rights Watch he spoke to numerous protesters who were present. They told him that “SWAT” security forces, which report directly to al-Maliki, surrounded the protesters at dawn on April 23, and said the forces attacked the crowd at 5 a.m. An Iraqi Defense Ministry statement said the army responded to live fire, and an attack ensued in which 27 people were killed: three soldiers and “a combination of protesters and militants.”
“The protesters told me that the SWAT forces first sprayed the crowd with hot water, then started shooting directly at the people who were armed only with sticks,” al-Obeidi told Human Rights Watch. The security forces “knew that demonstrators didn’t have weapons,” he said.
Protesters reported to al-Obeidi that 50 demonstrators were killed and 120 injured in the clashes. As protesters tried to run from the square to escape the shooting, he said, security forces also arrested “large numbers” of people. The Defense Ministry admitted to detaining 75.
Local and international media reported that the security forces used helicopters, tear gas, and live ammunition in the raid, and that later in the day, there were several retaliatory attacks against security forces in Haweeja by unknown groups. According to the reports, some armed groups took control of government security checkpoints.
When 4 Iraqi newspapers were attacked in Baghdad this month, we saw the same silence. Iraq is the tragedy the western media participated in and now it's the tragedy the western media desperately wants to pretend doesn't exist.
