Iraqis call for demonstration in Baghdad’s Tahrir (Liberation) square Friday, Feb. 25th

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: A statement has been released in Iraq on Tuesday, calling on intellectuals, unemployed people, widows and orphans to join together in a broad demonstration in central Baghdad‘s al-Tahrir (Liberation) Square on Friday, February 25th. The statement, a copy of which was received by IraqiNews.com news agency, called on “unemployed Iraqis, intellectuals, toilers, graduates from Iraqi and international universities who became house-keepers and millions of unemployed people, widows and orphans, to head to the streets for huge demonstrations on Friday, February 25th, in central Baghdad‘s al-Tahrir (Liberation) Square. The party behind the call for the demonstration called it the “Iraqi Rage Revolution,” that will be launched “for change, freedom and geunuine democracy.” The demonstrators, the statement said, shall carry bannerw and slogans, including, “Haven’t we kept enough silence?,” “Haven’t we been patient enough?,” and “don’t you know that we carry on our backs about 100 billion (b) dollars annually from oil, trade and tourism revenues, and we still eat onions, if available?” “Thousands of conscious youth have been informed about the planned demonstrations through electronic messages and Facebook,” the statement highlighted.  “These messages have called on the Army and Police forces to become protectors of the Homeland and the People,” the statement added. It called on the Army and the Police to take “similar positions, like their brethren in Tunisia and Egypt, as we are not in the epoch of mobs and dreadful weapons, but the epoch of the pen and the real word, expressing the right of the poor to live decently.” Several Egyptian cities have witnessed a series of protest demonstrations against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak over the past two weeks. Despite the deployment of Army forces in the main streets, supporters of Mubarak’s regime have clashed with the demonstrators about five days ago, killing and wounding dozens of people. SKH (TI)/SR 4438