‘I feel I’m walking in Paris’: the revolutionary art of Tahrir Square
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A tunnel in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square has become an open-air gallery depicting the anger and emotions of Iraqi protesters.
Rudaw’s Lawk Ghafuri was walking through Tahrir Square on Wednesday morning when he met with Walid, a local who has been participating in the protests since October 24.
He insisted on showing Rudaw the famous tunnel in Tahrir Square which is full of revolutionary art.
“Every time I enter this tunnel I feel I’m walking in Paris,” said Walid, 38.
Protesters and artists have turned the walls of the tunnel in Tahrir Square into a mosaic of revolutionary paintings depicting protester resistance against the brutal crackdown by security forces.
Several paintings are centered around female empowerment. An artist sitting among paint cans works on a mural of an injured woman holding a rose, symbolic of the peaceful nature of the protesters.
Women have been an essential part of the protests in Iraq since they began on October 1.
Many female activists and medics have been reported kidnapped and threatened by unknown armed groups. Well-known activist and medic Saba al-Mahdawi was kidnapped in early November for supporting and assisting the wounded protesters in Tahrir Square before being released a few days later.
Iraqi women have always been part of the protests in Iraq despite facing many restrictions, including religious, cultural and tribal obstacles which leave them unable to fully participate in civic life.
Although Iraqi women theoretically share equal civil rights with men under the Iraqi constitution, religious conservatism continues to permeate all areas of public life, in opposition to the socially liberal values found among sections of the urban youth.
An artist from Basra, Sajad Mustafa, has created one of the tunnel’s most famous pieces – a memorial to those killed over the last two months, writing the name of every victim on the tunnel’s walls.
“The main message of the drawings in Tahrir Square tunnel is to make those drawings as the symbol of the protests in Iraq, and to immortalize the sacrifices of the protesters in the form of drawings and art,” Mustafa told Rudaw English on Sunday.
Mustafa painted the names of the “martyrs” to show the world that there protesters lost their lives demanding their basic rights.
Youth took to the streets across southern Iraq on October 1, protesting against a lack of basic services, rampant corruption and high unemployment.
After a pause to observe the Shiite commemoration of Arbaeen, protesters expanded their demands, calling for an end to the current governance system and the resignation of the three top officials – the president, prime minister, and parliamentary speaker.
More than 420 protesters and members of the security forces have been killed since October 1, with around 16,000 others wounded due to the clashes between security forces and protesters.
Different political blocs in Iraq have been in talks to elect a new Prime Minister after Adil Abdul-Mahdi the current PM resigned last week following an intervention by top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.
Sistani’s representative, Abdul-Mahdi al-Karbalaei announced on this Friday’s sermon that Sistani has “no role” in the talks to elect a new PM and he urged that they should be selected within the 15-day window outlined in the constitution with no “foreign interference”.
“The marjaiyah [Sistani] is not party to any discussions on this and has no role in any way whatsoever,” al-Karbalaei said, in the Friday sermon in the shrine city of Karbala.