Veil or die: Basra militants tell Christian Iraqis

40 unveiled women killed in five months in Basra

DUBAI (AlArabiya.net)

Students with affiliations to armed militias are harassing their Christian colleagues and giving them the choice to veil or be killed in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, press reports said Sunday.

A militia student approached three Christian girls on campus on the first day of the academic year, demanding that they wear the veil, The Sunday Times reported.

Zeena, one of the three, said they didn't pay attention to him initially, thinking he was just a conservative student expressing his personal opinion. But the next day, a second man wearing the black outfit of a known Shiite militia in the area, stopped them again.

According to the girls, he said to them aggressively: "'We asked you yesterday to wear a hijab, so why are you and your friends not covering your hair?"

They were frightened, Zeena said, but told him that they were Christians and were not required to wear the veil. He replied, "Outside this university you are Christian and can do what you want; inside you are not. Next time I want to see you wearing a hijab or I swear to God the three of you will be killed immediately."

Since that day, the girls said they use veils wherever they go in Basra.

Several women interviewed by Reuters said Islamic militants -- they did not say who -- were intimidating them, forcing them to cover their hair and bodies.

"A party official who is also a university student came to me and said female students should not attend exams without wearing the headscarves," said one student, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals.

"He told me 'God willing there won't be any girl left in the university without wearing a headscarf'."

The harassment is not exclusive to girls. Ahmed, a 19 year old student, said the militias asked him to grow a beard and shorten his hair in accordance with Islamic principles. He added that male and female students were not allowed to sit side by side.

Ahmed told The Sunday Times a campus version of the religious police monitor the behavior of students and even check their cell phones to make sure they have no "immoral" pictures or videos.

Ali Yusuf, another student, recounted to the British newspaper that at a recent freshman party, militia students turned off the music, and one of the armed militiamen grabbed the microphone and started praising Shiite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr.

Killings

More than 40 women have been killed and their bodies dumped in the streets in the past five months for behavior deemed un-Islamic, the city's police chief said.

A warning scrawled in red on a wall threatens any woman who wears makeup or appears in public without an Islamic headscarf with dire punishment: "Whoever disobeys will be punished. God is our witness that we have conveyed this message," it says.

"Some women were killed with their children," Basra police chief, Major-General Abdul-Jalil Khalaf, told Reuters. "One with a six-year-old child, another with an 11-year-old."

Police in Basra showed Reuters pictures of women whose bodies were found with notes attached, accusing them of adultery and other "honor crimes".

Rita Anwar, a 27-year-old Christian, said she was thinking of leaving Basra, or even Iraq, altogether.

"You would not believe that I also wear the headscarf sometimes. It is terrifying to read this graffiti in red threatening murder," she said.

During the long rule of Saddam Hussein, who suppressed Islamists, Iraqi women in urban areas enjoyed some of the most casual dress codes in the Middle East.

Conservative Islamist influences have spread since the U.S.-led invasion removed Saddam in 2003. This has led to stricter interpretations of Islam in many parts of Iraq.

Perpetrators

Khalaf, who was sent to Iraq's second-largest city in June with a mandate to get tough on criminals, said he did not know who the perpetrators were but vowed to catch them.

Iraq's former transport minister and leading figure in the Shiite Sadrist Movement told AlArabiya.net that the figures are exaggerated, but he didn't deny the killing of women, which he put down to tribal disputes. He said his movement does not interfere in what women wear in Basra.

The Head of the Shiite Endowment, Saleh Al-Haidari, denounced the killings: "Nobody has the right to do this, and there is nothing in religion that justifies it. Those people have nothing to do with Islam, whether Sunni or Shiite."

A group of tribal Shiite leaders told Reuters in October that Shiite Islamist political parties were imposing strict Islamic rules in southern provinces and using their armed followers to create a state of fear.

The sheikhs, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the conservative attitudes meant that only religious music was now allowed to be played in public places and dancing was forbidden, as was drinking alcohol.

Basra itself has witnessed a turf war between rival Shiite groups, including supporters of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia, the powerful Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, and the smaller Fadhila party which controls the governorate.

Hareth al-Athari, an official from Sadr's political movement in Basra, said the movement opposed killing women for wearing un-Islamic attire.

"This is a hideous crime," said the bearded cleric, wearing a black turban and black robe. He said the role of his movement's members was to educate people through written statements or face-to-face talks.

Asked who could be behind the killing of women, Athari said: "We cannot accuse anybody. But I can say that these gangs are linked to international intelligence agencies."

"Or they are linked to movements that want to accuse the Sadrist trend of this," he said.

Khalaf, who has won praise from coalition forces for his efforts to clean up Basra, said investigations were still under way to find those behind the killing of women in the city.

He said assassinations aimed against other groups, such as university professors, had dropped. "Only a few professors (have been killed). But I do not accept even if it was just one," he said.


(Translated from Arabic by Sonia Farid).