Last Updated: Thursday, 1 May, 2003, 22:05 GMT 23:05 UK


Iraq communists mark May Day

By Magdi Abdelhadi
BBC News


A few hundred Iraqi communists took to the streets of Baghdad for the first time in decades to mark May Day.

The party was banned by the regime of Saddam Hussein, even though 1 May was observed as a national holiday.


The party survived Saddam Hussein's repression
The men, women and children who gathered in central Baghdad to mark May Day sported red scarves adorned with the communist hammer and sickle, and waved red flags.

The choice of venue was significant - Fardus Square is where Iraqi crowds pulled down a huge bronze statue of the deposed Iraqi leader hours after American troops captured the city.

With fists in the air, the communist demonstrators marched under banners calling for security, peace and democracy in Iraq, and chanted hopeful songs calling for a happy future for a united and free Iraq.

Political voices

Like many other Arab regimes, Saddam Hussein outlawed the Iraqi communist party and persecuted its members.

But despite that, the party, which used to be one of the best organised leftist groups in the Arab world, has survived with a newspaper, Tareeq Al-Shaab, and a radio station operating out of the Kurdish region in the north.

The party says since the fall of the Baath regime, it has been opening new offices throughout Iraq.

Over the past three weeks Iraq has seen an explosion in the number of political groups that have either returned from exile or come out of hiding; some are Islamic groups vehemently hostile to the Americans.

This has led some commentators to conclude that Washington will soon discover that it was easier to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein than to figure out how to replace it.