In Iraq, women protested after the murder of a blogger by her father

In Iraq, dozens of women protested after the murder of blogger Tiba al-Ali in the city of Diwaniyah, Al Jazeera reports . The girl was strangled by her own father, who was unhappy with her move to Turkey.

Al Jazeera published a recording of a supposed conversation between the girl and her father. In it, he expresses dissatisfaction with the blogger’s move, to which Tiba al-Ali replies that she was forced to leave after being raped by her brother.

After the murder, the girl’s father surrendered to the police, justifying his actions with the desire to “wash away the shame.”

Al-Ali moved to Turkey back in 2017. She studied at one of the Istanbul universities, and in November 2021 she began running a YouTube channel, which has a total of more than one and a half million views.

Protesters are calling for a law on domestic violence, as well as the abolition of 409 articles criminal code, which allows men to kill relatives, justifying it as “disgrace to the family.”

Context

• In September, a wave of protests broke out in neighboring Iran after 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini died after being harshly detained and beaten by “morality police” for wearing the hijab “incorrectly.” One of the slogans of the protests is “Women, life, freedom.”

• According to the human rights project HRANA, at least 508 protesters died during the violent suppression of the protest, including 69 minors.

• More than 19 thousand protesters were arrested. In early January, Iranian authorities executed anti-government protesters Muhammad Mahdi Karami and Sayed Muhammad Hosseini. They were accused of murdering an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps security officer and were sentenced to death on December 5.

• In January, the European Parliament called on the EU to add Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to its list of terrorist organizations. The Telegraph also wrote about similar measures on the part of Great Britain.