Don’t hang dictators just deny them Gold!

By Kipkoech Tanui

S

ADDAM Hussein’s hanging was crude and crass. Not that the scoundrel, who fled the palace, for the rat hole, was good.

No, he was a vampire. But with the humiliation in the hands of the allied forces, he was on the road to natural death. Dictators and warlords die heartbroken and dishonoured. Public humiliation, the handcuffs, the absence of gold, the mat for a bed, taunting and defeat are simply too much for them. Because of pride and arrogance, they die slowly, haunted by guilt and public recoil.

The last moments of the likes of Pol Pot in Cambodia, Sani Abacha in Nigeria, former Soviet’s strongman Joseph Stalin, Idi Amin Dada of Uganda and Adolf Hitler of Germany speak volumes about the likes of Saddam. It is strange that Americans are ecstatic, with President Bush saying Saddam got the justice he denied millions of Iraqis.

Even the US violates international law

His spokesman Tony Snow was more imaginative: "There seems to be a lot of concern about the last two minutes of Saddam Hussein’s life and less about the first 69 years, in which he murdered hundreds of thousands of people. That’s why he was executed."

Curtis FJ Doebbler, a member of Saddam’s defence team, put it succinctly: "This is the type of world that American President is promoting: One in which victims of American aggression must depend on using all necessary means — including violence — to respond to America’s violations of international law because the US is blind to the scales of law. This does not bode well for the new year."

Hanged on a holly day

The timing was also awful; he was goaded to the gallows on a holy day for Muslims. The men of the biceps and hoods pulled the trapdoor in the middle of his final prayers. He was also taunted — ‘Go to hell’ — by the Shi’ite hangmen. That was fuel poured on the fires of Iraqi's sectarianism. They are now after the guy who used his mobile to get the grainy pictures of the dictator as he slipped into the life hereafter.

Pol Pot, who soaked Cambodia with blood under the banner of Khmer Rouge, was arrested and kept in confinement until he died. By then, he was a shrunken and heartbroken man humbled by the sands of time.

His shame wasn’t even that he strove to return his country to the medieval age by abolishing money and pushing communities out of towns into farmlands. It was the ease with which the educated were pumped off just for speaking foreign languages.

In Russia, many believe Stalin was assisted to die through poisoning. He collapsed in his bedroom after a night of partying. There was talk of stroke and brain haemorrhage.

Hitler chose to kill himself next to his poison-gulping wife. What Saddam got is similar to the Italian fascist of all time, Benito Mussolini. They shot him and his mistress and hung them on meat hooks.

That buffoon born in Koibatek, Idi Amin Dada, was kept alive and from Saudi Arabia he saw Uganda rise from the ashes. He died in obscurity. Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic got a death sentence, which was later reduced to life in prison, and far much later, 20 years in jail. President Kolingba later declared a general amnesty. He died, like Abacha, of heart attack but not before he proclaimed himself the 13th disciple.

In Liberia, the king of limb cutters Foday Sankoh died of stroke awaiting trial. Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu wa za Banga died of prostate cancer in a foreign land. Somalia’s Siad Barre too died forlorn and in faraway lands. Ferdinand Marcos of Philippines died of heart, kidney and lung problems in Hawaii. Similar excruciating deaths awaited Agustino Pinochet (Chile), Turmekistan’s President-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov, Haiti’s Papa Doc, Spain’s Francisco Franco and the Butcher of the Balkans, Slobodan Milosevic.

Iraqis dying of America’s adventurism

After being hauled of the rat hole, knowing his pride and arrogance, Saddam wouldn’t have lived long. I wonder why he did not take the bullet like Hitler. But his blood is now dripping from the hands of Bush and his choice of leaders for Iraq. Thousands of Iraqis too have died on the altar of America’s adventurism.

Death sentence is vile, particularly when handed by a partisan court. The heart also goes out to those who suffered in his rule. They include Jawad Abdul-Aziz who, when Saddam was hanged, shouted; "Now he is in the dustbin of history.’’ He lost his father, three brothers and 22 cousins in Saddam’s revenge killings. But in Bushland last January, Clarence Ray Allen was given the lethal injection for a 1976 murder. He was 76, deaf, blind and on a wheelchair. His lawyers called it "gratuitous punishment".

The writer is The Standard Managing Editor, Weekend Editions

ktanui@eastandard.net