Yasser Al-Hamdani
Yasser Al-Hamdani is an Iraqi human rights defender and journalist. His work focuses on fighting corruption, advocating for journalists, and documenting human rights violations during the time of conflict in Iraq. He has documented violations and attacks in the city of Mosul, in Northern Iraq, since 2003 and has worked with associations and organizations concerned with the rights of journalists. He is a member of the Iraqi Journalists Syndicate. As a result of his work on fighting corruption in Iraq, Yasser Al-Hamdani was subjected to several kinds of targeted harassment, including death threats, by state agencies and authoritarian parties.The human rights defender left the city of Mosul in June 2014 during the ISIS/Daesh occupation of the city. He worked with several newspapers and international agencies until he returned to Mosul during the city's liberation operations and worked as a war correspondent. He was injured several times while covering the conflict in the city of Mosul. After the war ended, he focused his work on fighting corruption and exposing corrupt officials and entities in Iraq in general and in the city of Mosul in particular.
Since October 2019, a new wave of peaceful demonstrations have been organised in Iraq unifying different ethnic and political groups, following years of protest movements by different sectors of society. The demonstrations were led by Iraqi human rights defenders protesting the government itself as well as non-state armed and political groups, endemic corruption, economic struggle and to demand basic and functioning state services. Police, military and armed groups quashed these demonstrations with lethal force, suppressing their rights to assembly and free speech. Live ammunition was used against peaceful protesters, which resulted in the death of hundreds of demonstrators including many human rights defenders while others were abducted and attacked.
Iraqi human rights defenders are subjected to assassination, abduction, arbitrary arrest and enforced disappearance. Iraq is considered an extremely dangerous country for human rights defenders, particularly with the ubiquity of armed groups who pose additional threats to obstruct their work.
