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Iraqi expatriates watch Saddam hang in Internet cafés (Aswat Al Iraq Feature Article)

This is Aswat Al Iraq’s English translation of a feature previously published in Arabic.

Iraqi expatriates watch Saddam hang in Internet cafés

Cairo, Jan 5, (VOI) – With news leaks on the imminent execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, many Iraqis abroad rushed to Internet cafés to watch the procedure.

Since late 1970s Iraqis started to go West seeking political asylum and the trend flourished in the 1980s.

The embargo in the aftermath of the invasion of Kuwait added economic reasons for immigration that now there are about four million Iraqi immigrants, according to UN figures, and most of them live in western Europe, the Americas and Australia.

Chat rooms, however, linked the home-sick Iraqi expatriates together.

Before the recent war on Iraq in 2003, most Iraqi chat rooms saw a lot of controversy over international intervention to unseat Saddam regime.
As soon as the appellate body in Iraq upheld on December 26, 2006 the death sentences against Saddam, his step-brother Barzan al-Tikriti, the former chief of the Iraqi intelligence, and Awwad al-Bandar, the former president of the Revolutionary Court, the issue became the dominant topic in Iraqi chat rooms.

In the “Iraqi Parliament” chat room, joined mostly by Shiites and Kurds who speak fluent Arabic, Abu Malak, who resides in the United States, said he would head with his family to the White House and raise a “thank-you” placard.

One Iraqi wanted to arrange the trip to the White House with Abu Malak, while another objects any thanks to America, which, he said, has supported Saddam until the year 1990.

In another room, Shiite Kurds exchanged congratulations. A comment that deemed Saddam a hero made a participant angrily lamenting the death of her two brothers, who were executed along with thousands others during a campaign of forced relocation in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In a chat room called “the Iraqi Diwan”, which introduces itself as a secular liberal room, participants rejected Saddam’s execution, which, they believe, would fan the flames of sectarian division.

“The Shiite parties will have the execution as an achievement for them. This would be followed by an account-settling vendetta and exaggeration about how the Shiites were unjustly treated, not to mention the growing influence of the clerics and Iran,” said Samer, a participant in the Diwan room.

Qader, who has not joined an Iraqi chat room for months, appeared hours before the execution in search of someone to share the moment with. Qader said the Iraqis split over the execution and even over the way to carry out the death sentence.

As news reports that the execution of the former president will take place before 6:00 a.m. on December 30, 2006 flowed, two chat rooms registered the highest rates of visitors, reaching 250.

Source: Aswat al Iraq