Dear reader,

On the 1st of October 2019, a peaceful protest took place in Iraq where Iraqi’s from the young to the elderly participated in, in hope to be granted the basic needs of life. People left their houses and united together to deliver their voice to the world and to tell the world how the Iraqi government is oppressing the people and to also show the world how corrupt of a government Iraq has had for the last 16+ years. Iraq as known by many is one of the richest countries worldwide, it is the second richest nation with petroleum and is very rich with scarce raw materials, yet more than 35% of the people are jobless, many are homeless, and many live on a daily wage of only 2.5$ by dragging a wagon and selling goods such as tissue boxes, chewing gum, and anything there is in order for them to survive through these hard conditions. 

We Iraqi’s, are being oppressed by the government and various different religious and political parties and are being denied our right to protest. Although mentioned in the Iraqi constitution that a peaceful protest can take place, protestors are being killed brutally with people being sniped by snipers on top of buildings, tear gas grenades are being thrown to separate people, a live shooting is taking place, and many other inhumane acts have been taken by the Iraqi government against the people. Not to mention also, the freedom of journalism and the freedom to voice your opinion has also been taken from us, journalists are being killed on spot and big TV news channels are being attacked and shut down by unknown parties or are being threatened to stop their stream of the protests or it will be shut down, and the internet has been cut to all the regions within Iraq except for the states in the north to block people’s voices and to hide the truth of their corruption and dictatorship. 

We Iraqi’s just want to live like how others are living, peacefully and humanely, we don’t want this corrupt government to rule our country because all what we had for the last 16+ years was false promises to make Iraq a better place yet it gets worse by the day.