Miss Iraq: They threatened to kill me

Iraqi fashion model and media activist, Shaimaa Qasem, yesterday said that she had received “death threats.”

Qasem, who held the title of Miss Iraq in 2015, posted a short live video on Facebook’s Instagram, revealing that she had received a message read “your turn is coming.”

“Is it our fault that we are famous on social media,” she wondered, stressing: “we are being slaughtered like chickens?”

Qasem’s video comes amid uproar and resentment in Iraq. Several assassinations were recently carried out against a number of women activists in the Arab country.

Read: Six years in prison for former Iraq official over graft charges

On Thursday, the fashion model and blogger Tarra Fares was assassinated inside her luxury car in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Two days earlier, Suad Al-Ali, a civil society activist, was also shot dead in Iraq’s Basra.

In August, two beauticians, Rasha Al-Hassan and Rafif Al-Yasiri, were reported dead “in mysterious circumstances.”

Police investigation into the case has not reached final causes for the killing. However the spokesperson of the Iraqi interior and health ministries have announced “initial causes” for the death, including intake of an overdose medication by Rafif and Rashabeing attacked by a malignant disease.