Iraqi elites send a “memorandum of protest” to the Secretary-General of the United Nations against “

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[size=52]Iraqi elites send a “memorandum of protest” to the Secretary-General of the United Nations against “UNAMI”[/size]

[size=45]Iraqi elites sent a strongly worded protest note to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, in which they strongly criticized the silence of the United Nations Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) and the representative of the Secretary-General, Jenin Blaskhart, over what it described as “serious violations” of public freedoms and human rights in Iraq and abuses of the constitution. And the Iraqi laws and international norms that Iraq has signed, warning of the emergence of a “new dictatorship” in the country “under international auspices” if the UNAMI office continues to pursue the current policy of silence over the successive violations by the ruling forces in the country.[/size]
[size=45]The number of signatories to the memorandum on the first day of its publication amounted to about 1,000 people, including senior researchers, academics, journalists, politicians, and well-known activists.[/size]
[size=45]A note of protest against the management of the United Nations Mission in Iraq (UNAMI)
Mr. Secretary-General of the United Nations
Greetings of respect and peace
We, the undersigned civil society organizations, academics, journalists, activists, and elites, express to you our deep concern about what is happening in Iraq in terms of serious violations of human rights and public freedoms, amid strange and unjustified silence from the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), And its human rights office, which is responsible for preparing reports on the humanitarian situation and freedoms in Iraq. Within more than 100 days since the formation of the new government headed by Mr. Muhammad Shia’ al-Sudani, we have noticed that the legislative, executive and judicial authorities have taken steps that seriously violate the freedom of expression guaranteed by various articles of the constitution. The most important of them are (2, 38, 46), and clearly violate Iraq's international obligations in this regard, which is a direct threat to all rights acquired after 2003, an end to the culture of opposition and objection, and a return to the country to the previous totalitarian era.Although these steps threatening freedoms took place in broad daylight through judicial orders, government moves, and attempts to issue new laws, we noticed an absence of mentioning them in the last two briefings of the representative of the Secretary-General, Ms. Jeanine Plaskhart, while they are issues affecting the future of democracy in Iraq, which raises question marks. Seriousness about the real role of the United Nations Mission in Iraq, and about the extent of its commitment to its tasks contained in the Security Council resolutions that granted it the mandate on a renewed basis every year, leading to the last resolution No. (2631) for the year 2022, of which paragraph (d) of it stipulated the assignment of the head of the mission in Iraq To “promoting accountability, protecting human rights, and judicial and legal reform.”[/size]
[size=45]To clarify, we point to the silence of the “UNAMI” mission regarding the violations that are taking place under its watch, which occupied the public debate and as a result of which warning statements and publications were issued by Iraqi elites in the media and social communication, including the following:[/size]
[size=45]1. In December 2022, the Iraqi Parliament made its first reading of some legislation that undermines freedom of expression and opposition under the pretext of “regulating freedoms”, foremost among which are the “Freedom of Expression and Peaceful Demonstration Law” and the “Information Crimes Law”, two laws that preceded That the Iraqis widely rejected them when the forces of the current authority themselves tried to pass them in the years 2011 and 2017, and at that time international organizations concerned with freedoms issued strongly worded statements against them. Both laws include general concepts and broad phrases that allow the authorities to use their broad interpretations to suppress opponents. They also re-work repressive legal articles inherited from the previous regime to protect the current authority from criticism and public accountability. It is noteworthy that these articles were suspended after 2003 according to the decisions of the Coalition Provisional Authority at the time, because it found them not commensurate with the new democratic era.[/size]
[size=45]2. The Iraqi authorities are also striving to repressively control the Internet and the use of computers and electronic devices, and are now trying to issue the so-called “Digital Content Regulations in Iraq” that were published in some media outlets on 2/14/2023, and also include general concepts and loose phrases that do not A specific meaning can be achieved, and they all tend to prevent criticism of the state, its institutions, and its people, according to which penalties are imposed on electronic bans on persons and civil institutions, canceling accounts, preventing free access to the international network, and exorbitant punitive fines.[/size]
[size=45]3. Restricting the freedom of the Internet, which the authorities in Iraq are working on, through a regulatory regulation, constitutes a violation of international standards in the regulation of rights and freedoms, which require that the regulation of rights and freedoms be by legislation issued by the competent authority to legislate in the name of the people, and not by another body emanating from a law that allows Its restriction arbitrarily.[/size]
[size=45]4. In the last two weeks, the authorities have been racing frenziedly inside the House of Representatives to reintroduce the previous election law, which the massive October protests (2019-2020) caused to change it into a new law that meets the needs of emerging powers and individual candidates, and it has already been successfully implemented in the 2021 elections. New powers and personalities that the previous law denied them fair opportunities to compete.[/size]
[size=45]5. Since the end of January 2023, the Iraqi authorities have been carrying out a campaign of intimidation against tens of thousands of citizens under the title of “combating descending content”, in which the authorities have involved themselves in issues related to superficial art and public decency without any legal or constitutional basis, and without a clear definition. meaning “low content.” In its procedures, it mixed digital content that includes specific crimes such as “extortion”, “incitement” and “terrorism” with digital content that includes trivial comic situations that do not involve crimes, and some legal articles inherited from the previous regime have been adapted to justify This campaign is under general concepts that have no specific meaning, such as “public morals,” “morals,” and “public taste.”Because of this legal adaptation, judicial decisions were issued to imprison a number of famous people on social media for different periods of up to two years. The Ministry of Interior also published video recordings on its platforms in which it is proud of the systematic abuse of detainees and insulting them publicly under the pretext of defending morals, in a procedure that violates the rights of the accused during the investigation in accordance with the charters. and international treaties.[/size]
[size=45]6. On February 8, 2023, and later in the campaign referred to in the previous paragraph, the President of the Supreme Judicial Council issued circulars to Iraqi courts everywhere, ordering them to expand the campaign of “low content” to include what he called “deliberate abuse” of “state institutions.” in various addresses and institutions” without clarifying the meaning of “deliberate abuse” or defining the difference between it and criticism and political opposition, at a time when issuing this circular does not fall within the powers of the President of the Judicial Council, but rather is the exclusive competence of the plaintiff for the public right.[/size]
[size=45]7. In addition to the two previous points, on February 20, 2023, the Ministry of the Interior announced that more than 100,000 complaints of negative content had been registered, which means that 100,000 people may fall under unlawful penalties, which shows the scale of the potential disaster, which It may open the door to an increase in malicious lawsuits, in light of a system that has been suffering for years from problems and violations in the investigation stages, according to the reports of the concerned international organizations, which constitutes a systematic violation of human rights.[/size]
[size=45]8. The failure to address the phenomenon of armed parties that practically circumvent the law and use the power of the strongest to impose the will, and run an armed deep state parallel to the open state (on this particular point we refer to the lack of any serious and continuous work by the United Nations representation to urge the armed parties to lay down their arms and move to civil political action to support democracy in Iraq).[/size]
[size=45]9. The continuation of the phenomenon of impunity for the crimes of previous years, most notably the killing of demonstrators, the kidnapping and intimidation of activists and media professionals, the smuggling of oil and drug trafficking, then the failure to investigate cases of enforced disappearance of citizens who express their opposition political opinions, and the silence regarding the obstruction of the trial of the accused of killing the strategic researcher Hisham Al-Hashemi .[/size]
[size=45]10. The growth of crimes and serious humanitarian violations in recent times, and the signs of the return of sectarian hatred that destroyed Iraq’s human and material resources throughout the post-2003 period, including its political investment, especially since some of these crimes are very difficult to implement without penetrating the security military apparatus. We point out In this regard, we refer to the incident of the armed attack on 2/16/2023 on an Iraqi army force in Tarmiya (30 km north of Baghdad), killing and wounding ten of them (ISIS claimed responsibility for it), and then three days later, an attack against a sectarian attack on the village of “Al-Jabaila” in Diyala, and the killing of nine of its farmers, in addition to crimes targeting social actors and scientific competencies, such as the kidnapping and torture of prominent environmental activist Jassim al-Asadi, the assassination of doctor Ahmed Talal al-Madfai in Diyala, the assassination of the teacher Abdul Rasul al-Anbari in Babel, and the armed attack on the house of the two doctors, Qusour. Azhar al-Turaihi in Najaf and killed their mother.[/size]
[size=45]11. The forces controlling the government attempted to pass legislation and policies of an ideological-religious nature that nullify the social, cultural and religious diversity and the rights of groups and individuals that the constitution provides for protection under Articles (2, 3, 46), including the implementation of the Iraqi authorities on February 20, 2023 By issuing the “Municipal Imports” law, which in one of its articles prohibits all citizens (of all religions, including Christians and Yazidis) from manufacturing, selling or buying alcoholic beverages in Iraq, and this is an explicit violation of the constitutional article (37 / second) that guarantees the protection of the individual from intellectual coercion Political and religious, in addition to violating Articles (2/Second, 46), in addition to the negative impact of the new law on the financial income of thousands of citizens of non-Muslim religions who work in this field.[/size]
[size=45]12. Continued violations of the rules of democratic work and institutional administration in the Kurdistan region, including the failure to hold parliamentary elections on time, extending the term of the region’s parliament in violation of electoral legitimacy, disrupting its role in oversight, accountability, and approving the region’s annual budgets, and deepening the state of partisanship of institutions and then the administrative division And security, with its negative repercussions on the life of the citizen, in addition to the employment of the judiciary in the political conflict, and the halting of efforts to write the constitution of the Kurdistan region despite its importance in stopping abuses and violations of civil rights and in preventing the enactment of laws that threaten public freedoms and the right of expression and publication, in addition to widespread cases of prosecution Journalists, bloggers and activists, using the texts of laws inherited from the dictatorship era and contradict the Iraqi constitution.[/size]
[size=45]From all of the above, we express our strong protest against the possibility of the emergence of a new totalitarian regime, under the gaze and silence of the United Nations and its representation in Iraq, especially since one of the most prominent duties of the “mission” is to assist Iraq in developing its democratic system, and to defend the freedoms guaranteed constitutionally, not On the contrary, as we warn the international community against the consequences of watching and the danger of turning a blind eye to the political transformations taking place in countries such as Iraq, we remind it of other experiences that gradually destroyed democracy and led to dictatorships whose danger extended to the whole world, such as Nazism in Germany and Fascism in Italy.[/size]
[size=45]We call on the international diplomatic missions supporting UNAMI to investigate everything mentioned above, and to consider the details of the secret and public meetings that are accompanied by deafening silence about the deviation of the political process and the humanitarian violations the country is witnessing, and to verify the backgrounds of the advisers with whom the mission contracted, some of whom were constructive. On nominations from the parties of power, and not being satisfied with the briefings provided by Ms. Jeanine Blaskhart, who often overlooks many important contents, and contributes - frighteningly - to giving an incomplete picture of the situation of freedoms and democracy in Iraq.[/size]
[size=45]We, the undersigned, believe that the United Nations mission has failed in recent years to abide by the tasks entrusted to it, and that it tends to deliberations and political coordination with the forces of power incomparably more than its tasks in assisting the Iraqis in consolidating the foundations of democracy and ridding it of the repressive laws inherited from an era dictatorship, and that it is suspiciously avoiding responding to its duties in serious and continuous pressure on the ruling parties to change their approach that undermines freedoms, and to stop the bleeding chain of democracy.[/size]
[size=45]We call on the United Nations to intervene urgently, in accordance with its legal tasks and the principles of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and Iraq is one of the signatories to it, as well as the principles of the detailed conferences that followed the International Covenant, which considered the systematic violations of human rights in any country a threat to international peace and security, and that requires intervention the international community to stop it.
Attachments:
Draft Law on Freedom of Expression and Peaceful Demonstration, from the Iraqi Council of Representatives website via the link below:
Draft Law on Freedom of Opinion and Peaceful Demonstration
Draft Law on Information Crimes, from the Iraqi Council of Representatives website via the link below: Information Crimes
 Law
“Draft regulation regulating digital content in (Link from the “Baghdad Today” news website, 2/14/2023) Iraq
Draft regulation for regulating digital content  [/size]
[size=45]Link to the statement and the signatories until the evening of 3-3-2023
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