Many Turn Out to Celebrate Hussein’s Would-be Birthday

Category Politics | Permalink | 30. April 2007

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Well, it wasn’t your typical birthday party.

Saturday, April 28th would have been Saddam Hussein’s 70th birthday. Most of us believe thats a day we don’t need to remember. But in Ouja, Iraq, hundreds of people celebrated. They carried flowers and unlit candles to Saddam’s tomb to mark what would have been his birthday. While most of us would be celebrating his death, kids wore white, and many wore badges bearing Husseins portraits. Songs were sung and cake was served in Hussein’s burial place.

Most of us don’t even realize the extent of Saddam’s tomb. He is kept in a beautiful building, complete with marble floors, that he had originally built for religious events. the tomb is located in Ouja, a Tigris River village. Villagers also covered the city of Tikrit with banners. One read, “We congratulate the Iraqi resistance and the Iraqi people on the occasion of the leader’s birthday.”

Why, you may ask? Why celebrate such an awful dictators life? I certainly wondered. Supporters of Hussein stated that they were in mourning for the state of their country, along with their ousted leader. Seems they forget the mass murders and tortures he brought on to so many.

Saddam was hung December 30th, 2006, for crimes against humanity. After being captured by American soldiers near Ouja, he was later tried, and convicted, in the 1982 slayings of 148 Shiites.

“We came with candles but won’t light them because the candle of Iraq, President Saddam Hussein, has gone as a martyr,” stated the director of a children’s charity, Fatin Abdul Qadir. “We will light them when Iraq is liberated again.”

Supporters covered Hussein’s tomb in flowers, and draped it with an Iraq flag.

“The martyr has gone, but he is still immortal in our hearts,” Abdul Qadir was quoted as saying. “Baghdad flourished during his days, not like now.”

Sunni Arabs are a small minority that were a dominant force in Iraq under Saddam’s regime. They now oppose U.S. led forces in Iraq and have done nothing but brought violence and destruction to their own country. Unfortunately, even facing his own death, Hussein went down as a martyr to some. He took insults and threats with indifference, and much of the Arab world forgot his massacres and killings he and his regime committed.

courtesy of http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/04/28/saddam.birthday.ap/index.html

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