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- TikTok star Umm Fahad killed in third death of social media influencer in Iraq
TikTok star Umm Fahad killed in third death of social media influencer in Iraq
The murder comes amid the government's tightening laws and increasingly conservative attitudes
Iraqi social media star Ghufran Sawadi, known as Umm Fahad on social media TikTok, on Friday night was shot dead outside her home in Baghdad, Iraq.
The attack took place in the Zayouna area east of the capital and was captured on video by a surveillance camera and shared on social media. The footage shows a gunman riding a motorcycle shooting and killing Sawadi on the spot.
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Sawadi was popular on TikTok, where she shared videos of herself dancing to pop music in form-fitting clothes - the content deemed inappropriate by Iraq’s judiciary. The blogger was once sentenced to six months in prison for “the crime of producing and publishing several films and videos containing obscene and indecent language, violating public decency and morals,” according to an Iraqi judiciary statement.
Other Iraqi social media celebrities have previously been targeted in deadly attacks. The killings appear to have been an outgrowth of an Iraqi clampdown on criticism of the government and on the public display of behaviors regarded as secular and Western, according to human rights groups.
The stricter social media regulations and other linked legislation came in the wake of youth uprisings that began back in 2019, criticizing the government's corruption as well as the Iranian influence in the country. Most recently, the Iraqi parliament over the weekend criminalized homosexual relations.