Shafaq News- Baghdad

Two women were killed, an American journalist was abducted, and activists and reporters were prosecuted across at least four Iraqi provinces in the first half of 2026, an Iraqi rights monitor said Tuesday, in “a systematic campaign against peaceful dissent.”

The Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights, in a report, said authorities increasingly reached for publication lawsuits, arrest warrants, and detentions to silence critics, while armed groups leaned on threats and abductions. Most cases, it added, began with a single social media post or recording about corruption, failing public services, or the fight over water and living conditions.

The gravest cases were fatal. Yanar Mohammed, a prominent women's rights defender who ran Iraq's first network of women's shelters, was shot dead outside her Baghdad home by two men on a motorcycle on March 2. In Basra, in the south, lawyer Nour Saud al-Hamdani was also killed.

The Observatory recorded journalists and activists facing lawsuits and arrests in Baghdad, Najaf, Dhi Qar, and Maysan, alongside assaults on media workers, bans on cultural events, and the detention of environmental campaigners who had protested water shortages.

In the Kurdistan Region, the report cited the closure of the NRT satellite channel's offices and the arrest of journalists and activists who criticized living conditions or joined protests. Journalist Sherwan Sherwani remained behind bars, and several clerics were barred from the pulpit after sermons touching on corruption and public affairs.

Most prosecutions in the country rested on the Iraqi Penal Code and the Kurdistan Regional law regarding the misuse of communications devices —provisions the Observatory argued cannot be squared with the constitution's free-speech guarantees or Iraq's commitments abroad.

Read more: Iraq's press freedom index falls amid armed factions kidnappings, record violations