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azinorum -> APRIL 28th but no Saddam! (4/29/2007 8:31:16 AM)
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No more white suit, no more children carrying flowers and dancing at his feet, no more TV coverage showing him inspecting all the gifts he received on his birthday and no more new songs lauding his praises. Here are a couple of reports on what happened in different parts of Iraq on April 28, 2007. What does this day mean to you?
On Saddam's birthday, a divided Iraq remembers
by Hassan Al-Obeidi and Abdulamir Hanun Sat Apr 28, 2:27 PM ET
AWJA, Iraq (AFP) - In another reminder of the gulf that divides their warring communities, Iraqis remembered Saddam Hussein's era on Saturday at two starkly different ceremonies.
One honoured the memory of the former dictator, another laid more of his victims to rest. In the small northern village of Awja, where Saddam was buried after his execution in December, a crowd of 200 Sunni Iraqis, mostly young children, laid a wreath on his tomb in honour of his birthday.
Meanwhile, in central Iraq's Shiite holy city of Karbala, about 40 officials and clerics gathered to rebury the remains of 61 victims of Saddam's brutal crackdown of the Shiite rebellion that followed the 1991. Tens of thousands of Shiites -- rebels and innocent civilians alike -- were slaughtered by Saddam's forces and dumped in mass graves across
Since the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, officials have been gradually exhuming the victims and laying them to rest in massive cemeteries. Despite the passions that memories of Iraq's former era once aroused, both ceremonies were sparsely attended, indicating perhaps that the daily bloodshed in the country now overshadows the contested historical legacy.
In Awja, the children laid candles at the grave but left them unlit to signify what one organiser called "the darkness of the occupation".
"The children of Salaheddin want to celebrate the birthday of the martyr Saddam Hussein near his tomb. They regard him as their father," said Fatin Abdul Qadir, the head of a children's organisation in the province. Many of the children, however, could not have been more than three or four when Saddam was ousted in the invasion.
In Karbala, Shiites gathered to commemorate their own "martyrs".
"Today we are burying the remains of 61 martyrs that the former regime buried in a mass grave in the Razaza area in 1991 during the popular uprising," said Emad Muhammed Hussein, one of the organizers of the event.
"We obtained the remains from the Imam Ali base near Nasiriyah after US forces examined them and used them as evidence against the former regime."
Most Iraqis rejoiced when Saddam was overthrown in the second US-led invasion of their country, but many members of his tribe and some nostalgic members of his ruling Baath Party continue to honour his name. The bloody chaos that has descended on Iraq in the wake of the invasion and the controversial way in which Saddam was executed by the new Shiite-led regime have also hardened support for him in some Sunni communities.
Under local pressure, Ali al-Nida, the chief of the Baijat tribe to which Saddam belonged, attended the Awja ceremony after initially urging his people to keep the celebrations small or even to postpone them.
"I told them that the security situation is not suitable. They must postpone these celebrations until the circumstances improve and the political reality in Iraq is changed," Nida told AFP.
"Only then can they celebrate the occasion which Iraqis used to respect before the occupation began on April 9, 2003," he said, referring to the date when US marines pulled down a tall bronze statue of Saddam in Baghdad.
Supporters Celebrate Saddam's Birthday
OUJA, Iraq
Hundreds of people brought unlit candles and flowers to Saddam Hussein's tomb on Saturday to mark what would have been his 70th birthday.
Children wore white, along with badges bearing Saddam's portrait, and sang songs and poems as cake was served in Saddam's burial place, an ornate building with a marble floor that he had built for religious events in this Tigris River village.
The supporters said they were mourning the state of their country along with the ousted leader, who was hanged on Dec. 30 for crimes against humanity.
"We came with candles but won't light them because the candle of Iraq, President Saddam Hussein, has gone as a martyr," said Fatin Abdul Qadir, the director of a children's charity in nearby Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad. "We will light them when Iraq is liberated again."
Banners decorated buildings in the center of Tikrit, with one reading, "We congratulate the Iraqi resistance and the Iraqi people on the occasion of the leader's birthday."
Saddam's tomb was covered with an Iraqi flag and flowers.
"The martyr has gone but he is still immortal in our hearts," Abdul Qadir said. "Baghdad flourished during his days, not like now."
Many Sunni Arabs, a minority that enjoyed dominance in Iraq under Saddam's regime, oppose U.S.-led efforts in Iraq and have spearheaded a fierce insurgency leading to a cycle of retaliatory sectarian violence that has devastated the country.
Saddam, who was captured by American soldiers near Ouja in December 2003, was hanged following his conviction in the 1982 killings of 148 Shiites.
His stature has increased since his execution _ when he answered insults and taunts with disdain _ overshadowing the memories in much of the Arab world of the massacres and other atrocities committed by his regime.
For years, April 28 was marked by official celebration and enforced adulation of the authoritarian leader, who was "unanimously" endorsed by voters over the years in unopposed "elections."
A service of the Associated Press(AP)
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