Iraqi security forces on Saturday dispersed about 1,000 supporters of Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr who tried to march to Baghdad’s Green Zone housing foreign embassies, believing a Qur’an had been desecrated in Denmark.
The protesters were reacting to reports of an apparent desecration of the Muslim holy book for the third time in a month, with the first two in Sweden already raising diplomatic tensions. On its Facebook page, the extreme right group Danske Patrioter posted on Friday a video of a man burning what seemed to be a Qur’an and trampling an Iraqi flag.
Copenhagen police deputy chief Trine Fisker told AFP that “not more than a handful” of protesters had gathered Friday across from the Iraqi embassy. “I can also confirm there was a book burnt. We do not know which book it was,” she said. Sadr, who has a following of millions among the country’s majority Shiite population and wields great influence over national politics, has urged action after Qur’an desecrations in Sweden.
His followers on Saturday reacted to the news from Copenhagen, and gathered in the pre-dawn darkness at Tahrir Square in central Baghdad, some carrying portraits of Sadr. “Yes, yes to the Qur’an!” shouted the protesters, mostly young men. Security forces cut two bridges leading to the high-security Green Zone where governmental institutions and foreign embassies are located.
The demonstrators tried to force their way through but dispersed several hours later, following scuffles, an interior ministry official told AFP. Another security source said officers used batons and tear gas to repel a small group of demonstrators who managed to break into the Green Zone in an attempt to reach the Danish embassy.
Hundreds of Sadr supporters were already behind the storming and torching of Sweden’s embassy in Baghdad early Thursday, over a planned burning of the Muslim holy book in Sweden, weeks after the same protester there lit pages of the Qur’an. Early Saturday, Iraq’s foreign ministry had condemned “the desecration of the holy Qur’an and the Iraqi flag” in front of the embassy in Denmark.
The ministry’s statement said that “these actions provoke reactions and put all the parties in delicate situations.” A separate statement said “we cannot allow to happen again” what occurred at the Swedish embassy. It reaffirmed Baghdad’s “full commitment” to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and said it guarantees “the protection and security provided to diplomatic teams.”—AFP
