Introduction

On 6 July 2020, two gunmen shot dead Hisham al-Hashemi,a respected Iraqi researcher and analyst, outsidehis house in the Ziyouna district of Baghdad(BBC News 2020). On19 August 2020, Riham Yacoub, a graduate in sportsscience who ran a women's health and fitness centre,was murdered by anonymous gunmen in Basra(Robin-D’Cruz 2020). These are only two cases oftargeting killings in a list that is, unfortunately,much longer. In the period from 1 October 2019 to 9May 2020 the United Nations Assistance Mission forIraq (UNAMI) documented ‘31 incidents of attemptedor completed killings of persons linked to theprotests that resulted in 22 deaths (including threewomen) and the injury of 13’ (UNAMI and OHCHR 2020:33). The special Representative of the UN SecretaryGeneral for Iraq, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, addedthat ‘this is not random violence but a deliberatesilencing of peaceful voices, coupled with the totalimpunity enjoyed by perpetrators’ (UNAMI and OHCHR2020: 3).

Iraqi citizens are not new to violence. At least sincethe US invasion of the country in 2003, Iraq haswitnessed cyclical high levels of politicalviolence. According to the Iraqi Body Count, thenumber of civilian deaths from violence peaked in2006 and 2007 with the outbreak of the civil war,reaching, respectively, more than 29,000 and 26,000registered deaths, a number that peaked again in2014 with more than 20,000 deaths as the IslamicState advanced throughout the country. At its lowestlevel, between 2010 and 2011, the country was stillcounting more than 4,000 violent civilian deaths ayear. Forms of violence have changed according tothe country's political circumstances, but itsintensity has largely remained high. Against abackground of latent violence cyclically turninginto open conflict, Iraq has witnessed a paralleltrend of violent repression, which is distinctivelytied to the emergence and evolution of protestmovements challenging the existing politicalestablishment.

An Iraqi protest movement has appeared since at least2010–11, coincidentally with the events occurring inother countries in the MENA region, although it hasreceived far less attention than in other contextsacross the region, at least until recently. Iraq haswitnessed a number of episodes of socialmobilisation, which testify to people's agency andpower in a context of instability and violence(Costantini 2020).