Home > Sunni and Shiites converge on Baghdad to call for end to occupation
Sunni and Shiites converge on Baghdad to call for end to occupation
by Open-Publishing - Saturday 9 April 20056 comments
Demos-Actions Wars and conflicts International
Anti-US protests in Baghdad
April 9, 2005
TENS of thousands of Shiites converged on the centre of Baghdad for an anti-US protest to mark two years since the city fell to coalition troops.
Police cars blocked off main roads in central Baghdad and two major bridges across the Tigris River that cuts the capital in half as thousands marched through the street, chanting: “No, no USA, no, no America, no, no to the occupation.”
Radical preachers had called on their congregations to rally in Firdos Square in central Baghdad where US troops helped haul down a statue of Saddam in celebrated footage that was beamed around the world.
Tens of thousands of protestors from Baghdad’s Shiite slum of Sadr City headed toward the square, carrying Iraqi flags.
Some waved the notorious picture of a hooded naked Iraqi detainee, with wires attached to his body from Abu Ghraib prison scandal last year that blemished the US record in Iraq.
For the last two weeks, radical cleric Moqtada Sadr has called for thousands of followers to descend on Firdos square, the symbol of Iraq’s liberation from Saddam, and demand the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
Sunni clerics from the Committee of Muslim Scholars, which organized a boycott of historic January elections, urged followers to join the protest on Friday.
Thousands of Shiites had been ferried to the capital on buses since Friday.
AAP
Forum posts
9 April 2005, 11:40
Now let’s see if the occupiers listen to REAL democracy. The Iraqi people DON’T WANT US troops and torturers in their country, just as the Yanks or Brits would NOT LIKE Iraqi troops occupying the US or Britain.
Time to LEAVE, APOLOGISE, and pay $BILLIONS IN REPARATIONS for the mass slaughter, damage, and collapse of essential services.
10 April 2005, 00:41
Absolutely right. But you know the proverb: It is not Fascism, if we do it!
9 April 2005, 17:30
photo from ireland indymedia
I noticed that most of the US news stories are reporting this as Shiite protesters- they don’t want to show that Sunni’s and Shia’s are united, not divided and on the verge of civil war like they keep telling us.
9 April 2005, 19:13
Yes, it’s time the American people stand up to OUR government and tell them that we agree with the Shiites and Sunnis and Kurds and get our troops OUT of IRAQ NOW. IMPEACH BUSH, THE LIAR. He wasn’t fairly elected and he’s not a Christian. Down with the corrupt administration.
10 April 2005, 00:42
Bush is the born antichrist.
10 April 2005, 02:20
Where is Lee Harvey Oswald when you really need him?