Civil rights protests continued marching across Southern Iraq despite the outgoing Iraqi government's Thursday announcement on disbursing funds promised by Prime Minister Haider Abadi to central and southern provinces.
Demonstrations went on with protests against corruption and poor services in each of Basra, Maysan, Muthanna, Dhi Qar governorates and even the capital Baghdad.
While Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the supreme religious authority in Iraq, encouraged public riots as the only mean of obtaining rights, another Shiite cleric Ayatollah Bashir al-Najafi (one of the top four Najaf references alongside Sistani) urged calm and delaying demands to establish the oil-rich Basra province as an autonomous region.
Najafi’s representative Ahmad al-Safi, during a Friday sermon in Karbala, reiterated the right to protest in demand of rights.
Validating protests, Safi said that any Iraqi has every right to be angered by disrupted life affairs so long that protests are remain restrained and peaceful.
“When a person is exposed to anything that provokes his anger, such as a social problem, economic, political or military, and he decides to take it outside to face and protest it under a controlled manner, then such anger is praiseworthy,” Safi said.
“There are positive effects to anger,” he added.
On the other hand, Salah al-Din residents’ demand for the complete withdrawal of Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) factions grew intensively after Khazraj tribal leaders, known as sheikhs or elders, were kidnapped and killed by gunmen who were reported to belong to Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq.
Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, a PMF offshoot, denied its responsibility despite incoming reports.
Salah al-Din’s provincial council joined in the demand and called for “the removal of all armed factions from the province.”
The council also joined popular demands and called on the central government to “intervene and withdraw all paramilitary factions under the banner of the PMF to avoid further problems and clashes.”
Ahmed al-Jubouri, a renowned local politician, was asked to play a role in realizing a PMF exit.
