The coronavirus is above all a fight against the corrupt state and the social inequalities produced by it.

Maurizio Coppola

While the Iraqi government imposes a curfew and some cities close schools, universities and malls to limit the spread of the coronavirus, living conditions are getting more and more precarious due to lack of social and health protection. Social protests are shrinking due to risk and fear of contagion, but tens of thousands of people continue to build popular solidarity.
The coronavirus has now reached the Middle East and North Africa and is having a serious impact on people’s daily lives. Today, the virus is also producing important changes with regard to the social protests that had begun to rock a number of states in the region in the past year.

In Algeria the students who have been taking to the streets every Tuesday for more than a year decided to suspend their demonstrations; the president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who demonstrators claim is illegitimately occupying office, has also imposed a ban on Friday protests and the indecision within the hirak produced important discussions and finally to cancel the weekly Friday demonstrations. In Lebanon too, the increase in the spread of the virus is holding back protests.

However, the events of the last few days have revealed that the spread of the coronavirus is creating a new crisis within the economic and political crisis that the countries of the Middle East and North Africa have been experiencing for decades. The structural problems of these economies, and the lack of social services guarantees – in this case health services – to the overwhelming majority of the populations are accentuated by the blockade imposed on daily life. Iraq is a paradigmatic example of this.

Read more about it from the source: open Democracy