Iraq – 123 threats received by the media since protests began

Sulaimaniyah Province – Kurdistan Region – Iraq 03/02/2020

Ziad al-Ajili, director of the Journalist Freedoms Observatory in Iraq, said that the Observatory has recorded about 1 or 2 or 3 threats to the media, journalists and photographers in Iraq from militias protected by the country’s ruling authority, since the beginning of the protests in early October last year, of which 10 Iraqi media outlets have closed, some of them have left Baghdad, in addition to killing a reporter and a cameraman in Basra, as well as kidnapping 12 journalists and the departure of 50 Iraqi journalists to the country due to direct threats from militias, which became a major threat to transferring information from the sites of demonstrations and the documentation of crimes against demonstrators.