Human rights conditions in Iraq continued to deteriorate in 2013. Security dramatically declined as sectarian tensions deepened. Al Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent groups emboldened by the Syrian conflict and Iraq’s political crisis carried out nearly daily attacks against civilians, making 2013 the bloodiest of the last five years. Suicide attacks, car bombs, and assassinations became more frequent and lethal, killing more than 3,000 people and injuring more than 7,000 between May and August alone.

Since the Arab Spring began, Iraqi security forces have clamped down violently against peaceful demonstrators who demanded better services and an end to corruption. Since late 2011, authorities have curtailed demonstrations by flooding Baghdad’s weekly protests with pro-government supporters and undercover security agents. Iraq remains exceptionally dangerous for journalists, with security forces routinely threatening or even beating and arresting media workers. Authorities also confiscate or destroy their equipment. Armed groups kill hundreds of civilians and security forces every year. Abusers are rarely brought to justice for violating the rights of Iraq's most vulnerable citizens – women and girls, minorities, members the LBGT community, and detainees

Struan Stevenson MEP
President of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq

Saturday, 11th May 2013

News agencies across the globe have carried horrific images of the dead bodies of unarmed protestors massacred by Iraqi government forces in the Sunni enclave of Hawija on 23rd April. Videos showed the desecration of the corpses of those killed and the wounded left lying in the streets. These troubling images have created fear and consternation in Iraq and left the wider world- community reeling in shock at the renewed chaos and violence in Iraq. The massacre allegedly carried out on the direct instructions of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, led to the deaths of 70 innocent people, with a further 270 seriously injured. Since the Hawija massacre, attacks on other protests and demonstrations have continued and protesters have been systematically assassinated.

Iraq’s recent history includes two far reaching events: the UN sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990 and the 2003 US invasion and subsequent occupation. Together with a coalition of NGOs, research centers and universities from Iraq and throughout the world, GICJ documents human rights violations that took place in Iraq, and reports them to bodies of the United Nations such as the Human Rights Council. The aim of the process is to achieve justice for victims through all possible legal means and to prevent impunity for the perpetrators and stop similar violations. 

 It was on the evening of Wednesday, April 28 that CBS’s 60 Minutes first broke the news that shocked the nation and the entire world. They had obtained 8 exclusive photographs of prisoners detained in Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq being physically and sexually abused by none other than United States military personnel, and the question on everyone’s mind was whether or not this was official U.S. policy, or was it just a couple of soldiers “gone rogue.”

These photographs came to light only because a member of the 372nd Military Police Company, Spc. Sabrina Harmon, took pictures of the torture they inflicted and sent them to friends back home in an apparent attempt to boast about how “tough” she was being with these “terrorists.” Of course, in reality the U.S. military’s victims in this case weren’t “terrorists” at all. According to the military’s own intelligence, which was in turn relayed to the International Red Cross, up to 90% of all inmates interned in U.S. occupational prisons in Iraq,