President Nechirvan Barzani attended the 43rd anniversary of the martyrdom of Sayyid Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr in Baghdad Saturday evening. The ceremony was attended by a large group of Iraqi officials including Iraq’s Prime Minister, cabinet members, and government and party officials.

The President delivered the following speech at the ceremony:

In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

Dear Attendees,

Today, we remember the vicious crime committed by the Ba’ath regime against a great leader of the resistance and a great scholar of the Islamic world, Martyr Sayyid Mohammed Baqir Sadr, and his sister, Martyr Amina Sadr, known as Bint al-Huda.

Today, 43 years after this appalling crime, we pay tribute to the memory and souls of the two martyrs, and convey our commiseration to Mr. Nuri al-Maliki, Secretary General of the Da’wah Party and their members and supporters, the great family of Mr. Sadr and the entire Iraqi people.

On behalf of President Massoud Barzani, I would like to express my respect for the martyrdom of Imam Mohammed Baqir Sadr to you, the Da’wah Party, the entire Sadr family and the Iraqi people.

Ladies and Gentlemen.

It is a lesson from God and history that we see that on the day the regime martyred this scholar, during the same days 23 years later, the regime itself was defeated and collapsed.

The martyred Imam Mohammad Baqir Sadr was a great thinker and scholar. Therefore, his martyrdom was not only the martyrdom of a human being, but also the martyrdom of a Marja’a and a scholar who could have offered many other excellent works to his people and the Islamic world.

When we look at the life of martyr Mohammad Baqir Sadr, we see that he was a very talented person since childhood. He was someone whose knowledge was way ahead of his age. Martyr Mohammad Baqir Sadr completed his studies, books and sciences much earlier and raised strong and new scientific questions and discussions. His books in the fields of jurisprudence, economics, politics and other fields were great innovations at the time, and are still very important sources.

Martyr Mohammed Baqir Sadr was against the Ba’ath Party and did not allow people to become Ba’athists because the Ba’ath regime oppressed people and had caused war and misery for Iraq. Therefore, he laid the movement and intellectual foundations of the resistance movement and the Shiite political movement in Iraq.

Martyr bint al-Huda was also a very educated and intellectual person. She loved knowledge and reflection, so she overcame all difficulties as a woman. She devoted all her time to reading and writing. She wrote several important books. She was also a very brave woman, who refused to bow to the regime’s oppression as she was a great organizer of protests against the regime’s oppression of the Supreme Marja’ and the people.

Dear Attendees,

There have been long-standing and strong ties between the Barzan family and the Marja’a, as well as between the Kurdistan Liberation Movement and Najaf. My late father Idris Barzani, on the orders of the Kurdistan Revolution’s Leader, the late Mullah Mustafa Barzani, visited the Grand Marja’a Sayyid Mohsin al-Hakim in Najaf.

President Massoud Barzani has maintained constant contact with the Marja’a in Najaf. As a result of the late Sayyid Mohsin Hakim’s awareness of the oppression against the Kurds, Sayyid Mohsin issued a fatwa prohibiting the fighting against the Peshmerga of the September Revolution.

After the resumption of the war between the regime and the September Revolution in 1974, Mohammad Baqir Sadr in his reply to a young man named Kazim Jawda stated that it was not permissible to fight the Kurds; because the Kurds are Muslims.

In 1969, a number of Kurdish students were sent to Najaf by the late Mullah Mustafa Barzani to take part at the anniversary of the 40th Day of the Martyrdom of Imam Hussein (peace be upon him). Dr. Fuad Hussein, who is with us here today, was one of those students. After Barzani’s speech was read by one of the students, Sayyid Mohammed Mahdi al-Hakim told the Kurdish students, “You are the sons of Hussein because you are being oppressed and you are resisting like us.”

So while yesterday oppression, defense and resistance bound us together, today we must be together to eliminate all oppression and problems.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to remind you that the Da’wah Party and the Kurdistan Democratic Party have been the two main pillars of the struggle against oppression since the 1960s. There has been a lot of cooperation between the two sides. Peshmergas, fighters and members of both sides have often gathered in the same area and in the same place. They were together in the prisons of the former regime.

Therefore, the two main parties must rebuild a much better relationship. Similarly, the Da’wah Party must have strong relations with all Kurdish parties, because the Da’wah Party is much more aware of the oppression that has been done to the Kurdish people.

Therefore, in this ceremony, which has great meaning for solidarity and cooperation, I call on the secretaries and leaders of the Da’wah Party to play an effective role together in correcting past mistakes and resolving all issues, in order to strengthen trust between the Iraqi communities, strengthen the democratic system and consolidate federalism in Iraq, as required by the Iraqi constitution

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We all know that the Sadr family has a great position because of its great scholars, its brilliant history in science and in the fight against oppression, as well as its major and influential participation in the political movement and resistance. Today, this family is trusted by hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq and has great popular and political power.

I take this opportunity to call on Sayid Muqtada Sadr to initiate a new comprehensive dialogue with all parties and leaders in order to consolidate the political system in Iraq and strengthen the reform movement and an Iraqi solution to the problems inside Iraq.

On this occasion, we once again send our greetings and peace to the souls of Martyr Sayyid Mohammed Baqir Sadr, Martyr Bint al-Huda and all the martyrs.

Thank you.