IRAQ: Lethal response to protest demands

Protests against unemployment, corruption and poor public services, making demands for economic, political and social change, have been mobilising in Iraq since at least 2018, with a great wave of recent protest unfolding from October 2019 onwards. The state responded with great violence, and the violence was lethal and at scale: within six months of protests starting, an estimated 700 people had been killed, with security forces targeting protesters with live ammunition and at times deploying snipers to pick protesters off.