Reham Yacoub (Iraqi doctor; women's-rights campaigner; Basra Tishreen protest organizer, assassinated Aug 2020) — Middle East Eye interview, 2018: her defiant resolve — "We are expecting that we might get killed as well, but this won't stop us from asking for our rights and it won't stop us from living" — and determination to keep protesting until their demands are met.

We are expecting that we might get killed as well, but this won't stop us from asking for our rights and it won't stop us from living.

They have not heard any of our demands until now. The situation is getting worse. The thing we can do is keep going till we get our rights and for sure there will be some losses on this path.

[Source is English (Middle East Eye, quoting her own words from a 2018 MEE interview, republished in its 2020 report on her assassination; MEE's English rendering of her Arabic); tier-2, confirmed verbatim against the fetched page (apostrophe/dash glyphs normalized). published_date left NULL: the quotes are from a 2018 interview but the exact date is not established — not fabricated.] Declared statements of Reham (Riham) Yacoub (1991–2020) — an Iraqi doctor, women's-rights campaigner and a leading organizer of the TISHREEN ("October") PROTEST MOVEMENT in Basra, southern Iraq — the youth-led, civic-nationalist, largely non-sectarian uprising (from 2018, peaking October 2019) against corruption, unemployment, failing services (electricity, water) and the entrenched, Iran-aligned political class. She organized women's marches and was repeatedly threatened ("My loyalty is to my homeland" was among her chants). With prophetic defiance she said: "We are expecting that we might get killed as well, but this won't stop us from asking for our rights and it won't stop us from living," and vowed that despite the worsening situation, "the thing we can do is keep going till we get our rights." On 19 August 2020 she was assassinated by gunmen in Basra — one of a wave of killings of Tishreen activists widely blamed on Iran-backed militias. This is the IRAQI TISHREEN PROTEST-MOVEMENT / CIVIC-NATIONALIST / WOMEN-ACTIVIST cell — grassroots, non-sectarian demands for rights, jobs, services and accountability against corruption and militia/foreign domination, at the cost of activists' lives — a distinct pole from Iraq's sectarian party leaders and the militia/political establishment. [Axes: democracy / civic-nationalism (grassroots protest; rights; accountability; non-sectarian "loyalty to the homeland"), economic / social justice (anti-corruption; unemployment; services), women / gender (women's marches; female protest leadership), regime / foreign-alignment (against the entrenched, Iran-aligned political class and militias).]