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New Zealand's Iraqi community reacted with a mixture of joy and condemnation to the hanging of Saddam Hussein yesterday.
Assyrian Christians were opposed to his execution, while the long-oppressed Kurdish exiles and Muslim Shiites rejoiced.
Auckland human rights lawyer Iraqi Kurd Heval Hylan said if anyone deserved to die, it was the former Iraqi dictator. "(Kurds) will celebrate today, definitely."
Saddam had a fair trial, with access to lawyers, journalists and human rights organisations, he said. "He never gave this chance to Kurds. He executed thousands without trial," said Hylan, whose brother was hanged by Saddam's Baath party in the 1980s.
"I will never be happy that somebody dies but I am so happy he is gone. He has been a cancer for not only the country but the area around Iraq.
"Hitler didn't do as much as Saddam. It is better now he is gone and this chapter is closed."
Wellington-based Iraqi priest Aprem Pithyou said the majority of the Iraqi community here was Assyrian Christian and did not want Saddam executed.
"We don't like to be hanging any person, even though he was a dictator and killed Iraqi people."
Hanging the former dictator would only provoke more violence, he said, because Saddam still had up to 2 million Sunni followers in Iraq who had continued to hope he would return to power.
"Some people like him, they love him. He has a lot of people in Iraq who follow him. I think for a period of time, this will cause more violence."
There are an estimated 4000 Iraqis living in New Zealand. Many arrived during or since the Gulf War. Jafar Abdulghani, a Shi-ite Muslim who arrived in Wellington five years ago as a refugee, says he is surprised but "so happy" the execution had taken place so quickly.
"I was one of 400,000 of Saddam Hussein's victims ... me and my family."
Abdulghani lost a 9-year-old son after Saddam's violent repression of a Shi-ite uprising in Basra, just after his forces were expelled from Kuwait by the US.
He did not believe the dictator's death would impact on the current violence, which he believed was influenced by foreign elements who were financially supporting different factions for their own interests.
"It's not the end of the violence, it's the end of a bad regime."
Government Duty Minister Trevor Mallard said last night that while New Zealand did not support the death penalty, Saddam Hussein's execution occurred within the framework of Iraqi law and the guilty verdict was appropriate.
Green Party spokesman Keith Locke said the execution was "completely uncivilised" and a stain on the United States' reputation. "It's actually lowering yourself to the level of Saddam Hussein ... and another black mark on George Bush."
