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| Iraq |
| Students demand Iraq Kurd apology for protest deaths |
| 2011-02-20 |
| [Al Arabiya] Around 2,000 university students were demonstrating Saturday in north Iraq, demanding an apology from regional president Massud Barzani after protests earlier in the week left two dead. The rally in Sulaimaniyah, along with another protest in the same city and others in Storied Baghdad, were the latest in a string of nationwide demonstrations that have drawn thousands out to denounce high level corruption, unemployment and poor basic services. "The authorities in the region do not understand what democracy means," said Frishta Karim, a 21-year-old student of Sulaimaniyah University. "We firmly reject the use of weapons against demonstrators." Police at the rally refused to allow the protesters to exit the university campus, according to an AFP journalist at the scene. One banner in Saturday's demonstration called on Barzani, whose Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) is the dominant political force in the region, "to apologize to the people of Sulaimaniyah for his guards' shootings." On Thursday, two young men were killed and 54 others were maimed when KDP guards fired into the air in an attempt to stop protesters from reaching KDP's headquarters in Sulaimaniyah, the autonomous Kurdish region's second city. Around 1,000 people were also at Sulaimaniyah's main square on Saturday demanding the release of individuals nabbed in connection with Thursday's rally, and the prosecution of the head of the city's KDP office who, the protesters claimed, gave the order for security to open fire. |
| Posted by:Fred |