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| Iraq |
| Another mass grave found near Baghdad |
| 2003-04-21 |
| Nearly 1,000 political prisoners slaughtered by the Iraqi regime are buried in secret graves at a cemetery on the outskirts of Baghdad, news agency AFP has reported. Other secret cemeteries in the city could take the number of dead to 6,000, the agency said. "The Ba'ath regime has gone and now we can talk freely with you," the manager, Mohymeed Aswad, told the agency. "They are all political. Ten to 15 bodies would arrive at a time from the Abu Ghraib prison and we would bury them here." Mohammad Moshan Mohammad, gravedigger at the cemetery, said the dead were mainly political prisoners. Those buried in the last three years had been shot or hanged and were males and females aged between 15 and 30. "The civilians were hanged. Sometimes a soldier would come through and they were all shot. I could distinguish them by their uniforms," he said. As hard as I try, I can't get mad at Mohammad and Mohymeed. They were doing a loathsome job, and any protest from them would have guaranteed their joining those executed folks in the grave. AFP said each grave was numbered rather than having a name inscribed on a tombstone. Yet another thing Saddam borrowed from Stalin. Another five cemeteries could take the number of dead to around 6,000, the gravedigger said. "There are another five cemeteries in Baghdad with secret grave sites so in this city alone there are about 6,000 (political) corpses." I'm just betting that other cities have their own mass graves as well. I do appreciate the outrage voiced today by the peaceniks over the finding of the mass graves -- Sean Penn was especially heartfelt and moving. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #1 Alas, "I am outraged by mass graves" gets pitched as a "man bites dog" story-- while "mass graves, no problem" becomes a viable fashion statement for selling pop culture to unthinking teenagers. {This is the consequence of having a commercially-oriented media, rather than diverse media with a variety of organizational, personal, and governmental missions.) Just to make the point that peace activists are not necessarily oblivious to the activities of the secret police in Iraq, here's a story from a peace activist attempting to assist the former Director of the Baghdad Symphony Orchestra in the wake of the looting of the music school. |
| Posted by: Sassafrass 2003-04-21 18:36:32 |