Iraq: New protests break out in Sunni heartland
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RAMADI, Iraq (AP) -- Thousands of Iraqi demonstrators massed in
a Sunni-dominated province west of Baghdad Wednesday, determined to
keep up the pressure on a Shiite-led government that many accuse of
trying to marginalize them.
It was the third
major protest in less than a week in Anbar, Iraq's largest province,
once the heart of the deadly Sunni insurgency that erupted after the
U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
The unrest is part
of a larger picture of sectarian conflicts that threaten the stability
of the country, a year after the last U.S. troops left.
The
demonstrations follow the arrest last week of 10 bodyguards assigned to
Finance Minister Rafia al-Issawi, who comes from Anbar and is one of
the central government's most senior Sunni officials. The case is
exacerbating tensions with Iraq's Sunnis, who see the detentions as
politically motivated.
Protesters turned out
Wednesday near the provincial capital Ramadi, 115 kilometers (70 miles)
west of Baghdad. The city and nearby Fallujah were the scenes of some of
the deadliest fighting between U.S. troops and Iraqi insurgents.
Demonstrators
gathered along a highway linking Baghdad with neighboring Jordan and
Syria. They held banners demanding that Sunni rights be respected and
calling for the release of Sunni prisoners in Iraqi jails. "We warn the
government not to draw the country into sectarian conflict," read one.
Another declared: "We are not a minority."
Al-Issawi
made an appearance at the rally, arriving in a long convoy of black
SUVs protected by heavily armed bodyguards. He condemned last week's
raid on his office and rattled off a list of grievances aimed at Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government.
"Injustice,
marginalization, discrimination and double standards, as well as the
politicization of the judiciary system and a lack of respect for
partnership, law and constitution ... have all turned our neighborhoods
in Baghdad into huge prisons surrounded by concrete blocks," he
declared.
Iraq's majority Shiites rose to
power following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein's
Sunni-dominated regime, though the country's minority Sunni Arabs and
Kurds do hold some posts in the government.
Many
Sunnis see the arrest of the finance minister's guards as the latest in
a series of moves by the Shiite prime minister against their sect and
other perceived political opponents. Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi,
one of the country's highest-ranking Sunni politicians, is now living in
exile in Turkey after being handed multiple death sentences for
allegedly running death squads - a charge he dismisses as politically
motivated.
"This sit-in will remain open-ended
until the demonstrators' demands are met, and until the injustice
against ends," cleric Hamid al-Issawi told The Associated Press at the
protest. He accused al-Maliki's government of trying to create rifts
between Sunnis and Shiites.
"These practices
are aimed at drawing the country into a sectarian conflict again by
creating crisis and targeting prominent national figures," the cleric
said.
Al-Maliki has defended the arrests of
the finance minister's guards as legal and based on warrants issued by
judicial authorities. He also recently warned against a return to
sectarian strife in criticizing the responses of prominent Sunni
officials to the detentions.
In a recent
statement, the prime minister dismissed the rhetoric as political
posturing ahead of provincial elections scheduled for April and warned
his opponents not to forget the dark days of sectarian fighting "when we
used to collect bodies and chopped heads from the streets."
The
political tensions are rising at a sensitive time. Iraq's ailing
President Jalal Talabani is incapacitated following a serious stroke
last week and is being treated in a German hospital. The 79-year-old
president, an ethnic Kurd, is widely seen as a unifying figure with the
clout to mediate among the country's ethnic and sectarian groups.
Also
Wednesday, the United Nations mission to Iraq said its monitors have
determined that a hospital that treated a member of an Iranian exile
group who died this week at a refugee camp near Baghdad did not consider
his health condition serious enough to warrant hospitalization when he
arrived for treatment in November.
An
organization representing the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq exile group on Monday
accused Iraqi authorities of preventing 56-year-old Behrooz Rahimian
from being hospitalized, and alleged that the U.N. failed to take
sufficient steps to intervene. Iraq considers the MEK a terrorist group
and wants its members out of the country.
The
U.N. mission in Baghdad said in a statement Wednesday that it "does not
have any indication so far that treatment was obstructed by the Iraqi
authorities." It noted that representatives for the refugee residents
told U.N. monitors that Rahimian "appeared to be in good condition until
the time of his death."
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Associated Press writers Adam Schreck and Sinan Salaheddin contributed.
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