BAGHDAD - Rifat Chadirji, known as the father of modern Iraqi architecture, died late Friday in the United Kingdom after contracting the novel coronavirus, friends and Iraqi officials have said.
The 93-year-old architect and photographer is credited with designing some of Iraq's most well-known structures, including the iconic "Freedom Monument" in the now protest hub of Baghdad's Tahrir Square its name.
"He was a giant of 20th century Iraq," said Caecilia Pieri, a scholar focusing on Baghdad's modern architecture who knew Chadirji well.
Top Iraqi officials including President Barham Saleh and caretaker premier Adel Abdel Mahdi mourned him on Saturday.
"With the death of Rifat Chadirji, architecture in Iraq and the world has lost its modern lung," Saleh wrote.
Born in Baghdad in 1926, Chadirji studied in London and returned to Iraq in the 1950s to design his magnum opus -- an elegant arch entitled "The Unknown Soldier" -- as well as the capital's post office and other public buildings.
But when the Baathist regime came to power, it tore down "The Unknown Soldier," replaced it with a statue of Saddam Hussein and tossed Chadirji into the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, where he remained for 20 months.
He wrote about the experience in "The Wall Between Two Darknesses," relating how Saddam had him released from prison to design a conference center.
Chadirji moved to Beirut a few years later and lived abroad during most of the devastating 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, the 1990 Gulf War, a decade of international sanctions and the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam.
When he returned to Iraq in 2009, he was scarred by what he found.
"I cannot believe what has happened to the buildings in Baghdad, everything has been almost completely destroyed," Chadirji said at the time.
In 2019, another one of his famed buildings was torn down: the National Insurance Company in Mosul, a seven-storey building from where the Islamic State group thew men accused of being gay to their deaths.
The structure was ravaged by the months-long fight to oust IS from Mosul and a municipal committee later decided to demolish what was left of it saying it could not be restored.
The NIC building was seen as a prime example of modern Iraqi design, with rows of slim archways and projected windows reminiscent of Iraq's beloved "shanasheel".
Chadirji had been a longtime advocate of preservation, working even under Saddam to halt the demolition of traditional Iraqi architecture in Baghdad.
"A people that cannot take care of its creations is a people without a memory," he said in 2009.
Agence France-Presse
BAGHDAD - Iraqi Christians quietly celebrated Christmas on Tuesday amid improved security, more than a year after the country declared victory over Islamic State militants who threatened to end their 2,000-year history in Iraq.
Christianity in Iraq dates back to the first century of the Christian era, when the apostles Thomas and Thaddeus are believed to have preached the Gospel on the fertile flood plains of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates.
Iraq is home to many different eastern rite churches, both Catholic and Orthodox, traditionally a sign of the country's ethnic and religious diversity.
But war and sectarian conflict shrank Iraq's Christian population from 1.5 million to about 400,000 after the US-led invasion in 2003. Following the onslaught of Islamic State in 2014 and the brutal three-year war that followed their numbers have fallen further, though it is not known exactly by how much.
In Baghdad, Christians celebrated mass on Tuesday morning -- declared a national holiday by government -- in churches decorated for Christmas. Once fearful, they said they were now hopeful, since conditions had improved.
"Of course we can say the security situation is better than in previous years," said Father Basilius, leader of the St George Chaldean Church in Baghdad where more than a hundred congregants attended Christmas mass.
"We enjoy security and stability mainly in Baghdad. In addition, Daesh was beaten," he said, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
Iraq declared victory over the militants more than a year ago, but the damage done to Christian enclaves on the Nineveh Plains has been extensive.
In Qaraqosh, a town also known as Hamdaniya which lies 15 km (10 miles) west of Mosul, the damage is still visible.
At the city's Immaculate Church, which belongs to the Syrian Catholic denomination and has not yet been rebuilt since the militants set it on fire in 2014, Christians gathered for midnight mass on Monday, surrounded by blackened walls still tagged with Islamic State graffiti.
Dozens of worshippers prayed and received communion, and then gathered around the traditional bonfire in the church's courtyard.
Before the militant onslaught, Qaraqosh was the largest Christian settlement in Iraq, with a population of more than 50,000. But today only a few hundred families have returned.
Faced with a choice to convert, pay a tax or die, many Christians in the Nineveh Plains fled to nearby towns and cities and some eventually moved abroad.
Some have since returned, Father Butros said, adding: "We hope that all displaced families will return." (Reporting by Reuters Video News; writing by Raya Jalabi Editing by Gareth Jones)
source: news.abs-cbn.com
