Legacy MattersYou may not know that May 16 was set aside in Iraq last year as a national day of remembrance for the 300,000 Iraqis found in mass graves, killed under the Saddam Hussein regime.
Gateway Pundit reminds us about the moment of silence around the country last year.
Human rights organizations estimate that more than 300,000 people, mainly Kurds and Shiite Muslims, were killed and buried in mass graves before Saddam was overthrown by U.S. forces in 2003.
"It is a lesson that we will never forget," Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said. "We want to build a civilized society in which humanity is respected."
Cars and pedestrians stopped in place at noon, while policemen and Iraqi soldiers conducted a military salute.
Here is an unbelievable description of Painful Archeology: Excavating Saddam's Graves
However, for millions of Iraqis, the most precious treasures are the remains of their loved ones in a plethora of mass graves scattered all over the country. Widows, mothers, fathers and orphans march to the newly discovered burial sites as soon as news break that yet another mass grave is unearthed. The scene is always the same: piles of bones divided in a manner defying the basics of human anatomy. Some piles contain extra ribs but missing other parts, or a skeleton of an adult with a skull of an adolescent, al wrapped in a manner below the dignity of the suffering the victim endured or the agony of waiting the survivors had to bear. Every skull has a hole in the back, the entry of a bullet fired at a close range, and the skeletal wrists still kept the robes that tied them prior to their fateful moments. This was how the earth inherited the poor. Identification of remains is often based on such clues as the victim’s decomposed documents or what the earth spared of the clothes or a watch, not DNA or lab tests. People in search for closure for many years often settled for the pile of bones that best resembled their missing loved one