The myth of Iraq’s “new born democracy” in Tahrir Square

Iraqi politi­cians and offi­cial media love to use the term “new born democ­racy”, which is a a way to jus­tify vio­la­tions occurred here or there against human rights, media and jour­nal­ists under this pretext.

On 25 Feb­ru­ary Iraq’s “day of Anger” demon­stra­tions, Maliki’s gov­ern­ment tried to reg­u­late the media through allow­ing one TV chan­nel “Al-Iraqiya” to broad­cast the event though the government’s eyes and not though the people’s eyes.

Watch this offi­cial Iraqi TV broad­cast and lis­ten to the celebration-like back­ground music and the TV anchor say­ing: “few hun­dreds demon­stra­tors in Tahrir Squ. demand the improve­ment of the basic ser­vices, handed their demands to the Lieu­tenant gen­eral Abdul Al-Karim Al-Izi — the com­man­der of Risafa — Baghdad”

Despite all the above and all other mea­sures, a TV chan­nel sit­u­ated by chance on the Tigris River, about 150 meters from the “Repub­lic Bridge”, mounted its cam­era to broad­cast what exactly hap­pened in Tahrir Squ. The lit­tle known Al-Diyar TV cam­era was the only wit­ness on the con­fronta­tion between the demon­stra­tors and secu­rity forces on the bridge.

At this point, Al-Diyar TV allowed the peo­ple of Iraq and the world to watch a unique scene, some­thing dif­fer­ent from what the offi­cial TV chan­nel broad­cast. For the first time a con­fronta­tion between the secu­rity forces and the unarmed civil­ians who amaz­ingly bare­handed man­aged to force the anti-riot police and their com­man­ders to retreat, as you see in the the image below, which shows Lieu­tenant gen­eral Al-Izi and his forces run­ning for their lives:

These scenes were very costly for the TV Chan­nel. Police raided the Al-Diyar build­ing and destroyed every­thing that was in the pos­ses­sion of this TV Chan­nel (cam­eras, stu­dios, devices … etc).

After this inci­dent and sim­i­lar inci­dents here or there, the anti-riot police started to chase, arrest and beat the media and jour­nal­ists, even in restau­rants and cafes around Tahrir Squ. but this time using the “new born democ­racy” wasn’t all that help­ful.