Justice Will Prevail

This is the slogan the families of the victims of Al Amiriya shelter in Baghdad during a live coverage from the bunker itself by Al Baghdadia satellite channel a couple of days ago to commemorate the victims of that criminal act during the 1991.

There were interviews with families of the victims and other people living in the surrounding area of the shelter – one of them told the story how he heard the first blast and after the second he ran towards the shelter, went to the second floor and saw people in flames screaming for help. Another told of his son who was in the shelter when it happened, the father went inside and saw his son, he was 12 years old then rapped in a blanket, his body was burned from toe to head, the whole flesh was eaten by the fire.

The families of the victims, old and young men and women appealed to the Iraqi government to re-open the shelter to public, which was closed in 2003 after the US occupation of Iraq. They called for effort and work on rebuilding the site and to make it a museum for others to see and remember those men, women, children and elderly people their lives were taken without purpose, and reason.

Some families were puzzled with the fact that human life is precious in many countries, taking an example of the terrorist attack on PAN AM flight in 1988, and they asked for justice, a similar fairness in assessing the altitude of this tragedy .

I was surprised to know from that live coverage that the US forces entered the shelter in 2003, torn up the pictures of victims hanging on walls, stepped on some of them with their boots and even sprayed their machine guns on the walls.

While I was watching, it crossed my mind many places I visited in the past in Europe to commemorate the victims of World War I and II, not to forget Hitler’s victims e.g. Auschwitz.

Would be wrong if Al Amiriya shelter be included as part of UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites? Maybe not! It is not the Pyramids.

It all goes back to one concept: how valuable those who died to their own people in order to make others from other countries acknowledge their rights, for justice.