Boy hangs himself 'like Saddam'

[Roon]

Multan - A young boy who tried to copy hanging scenes from the execution video of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein died in central Pakistan, said police on Monday.

Mubashar Ali, 9, hanged himself, while re-enacting Hussein's hanging with the help of elder sister, 10, after tying a rope to a ceiling fan and his neck in his home in Rahim Yar Khan district on Sunday, said a local police official.

The father of the deceased boy said that his children had been watching the video of Saddam Hussein's execution on television and attempted to imitate the hanging as other family members thought they were playing in another room

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,9294,2-10-1462_2050341,00.html

[valerief]

1. Oh, no, don't tell me they want to ban the broadcasting of

executions! Now this new voting democracy can have a referendum on whether they want broadcasted executions or not. It's a good thing the US gave them this democratic privilege.
:sarcasm:

[Kerrytravelers]

2. Great viewing for the kiddies, huh?

And we wonder why we live in such a violent world. No matter your opinion of the death penalty, I can' imagine actually wanting to watch an execution.

[malaise]

8. Yep but they musn't see a purple tubby or Janet's boob.

this is one sick fugging planet. I will never forgive MSM for violating my sensibilities for an entire day. Imagine how many kids across the globe woke early and started using that remote control. And thei want to regulate what people can say or see . Those fuggers who wouldn't even show a soldier's coffin returning home let alone the atrocities in Iraq.

[ikojo]

19. A member of the scooter rider's group I am in

said she watched the video over and over. She's happy that Hussein was hanged. I told her that he was created and funded by the US for many years and that I did not support his execution.

[az chela]

3. violence begets violence

What a thing for young children to witness.the barbaric hanging of anyone in a time when we are civilized enough to work out our problems with out violence is unforgivable.
We have to work for peace,not killing

[Deep13]

4. "Jackass" syndrome?

Sorry but this reminds me of American children who main or kill themselves trying to imitate stunts or pro wrestling moves they see on TV.

So why are the parents at fault?

[pitohui]

20. not jackass syndrome, i participated in some of this a few decades past

it isn't something i care to brag about but i played w. this as a kid, i think a lot of kids do, it's a dangerous game

even w.out current events and executions old westerns often feature hanging scenes and actually my first memory of being fascinated by a hanging came from watching an old western that i'm sure would be rated "g" by today's standards

i do not understand where the fascination with hanging and breath play arises but it sure wasn't invented by jackass or saddam, it has been around for a few decades at least

i suppose the parents are at fault if they are not keeping their kids in lock-down every minute of the day with video monitors to be sure the kiddies don't have a moment's privacy? that's sarcasm by the way, i don't blame the parents, my parents never knew and will never know of my interest in this topic, i somehow think most kids would know to instinctively hide this from the parents as there is a sexual or erotic element and you just instinctively know to keep that private

this is a tragedy for the family and for the child too who was just wanting to play around and dare death without, of course, actually dying

[soothsayer]

23. We tied nooses all the time as kids, and toyed with the idea of

building a hanging harness (to imitate hanging, tho the rope around your body, not your neck, would theoretically catch you before your neck got snapped) but we thought better of it. And thus are alive! We built guillotines instead, but only with wooden blades.

[hlthe2b]

5. oh, God.... Damn these f...king snuff tapes circulating...

I hope there isn't more of this....:cry:

[undeterred]

6. One of my high school classmates hung himself

and we never knew if he was trying to imitate an Alice Cooper stunt or commiting suicide. He was found by his parents when they came home after an evening out, and it was devastating.

[nonconformist]

14. One of my cousins accidentally hung himself when I was a teen. He was 10.

He was obsessed with magic and Houdini and was trying to practice for a stunt. His mother found him hanging in the basement. :cry:

[undeterred]

18. ...

Any loss of a child is bad enough, but when its something like this I don't think the families ever get over it. :hug:

[liberal N proud]

7. Remember when the fucking right wing said...

Clinton was teachers our children the wrong things?

Where are those bastards now?

We sure don't have to worry about this kid having sex now GOD!

[tinfoil tiaras]

15. Ugh i know

Which is worse: telling your children about a consensual blow job or having your children WATCH a hanging?

:puke:

[rubberducky]

9. How terribly messed up we are when we air

executions on television. I have not turned the news on since this happened for fear that my grandson (8yrs) would see it. It`s wierd that they show us the dead faces of thier trophies, but, we are not allowed to see pics of "our young people`s coffins". We truely need to "empty the trash" out of the white house.

[originalpckelly]

10. People shouldn't want to see executions on TV, they shouldn't have to be banned.

It's sick that people WANT to see Saddam's death.

And why weren't these parents watching their children? Children watching unsupervised television is like children playing with guns unsupervised, any more at least.

And this isn't even in frickin' America either.

[malaise]

11. Which parent believes he/she should monitor news channels.

How many parents were awake when that crap started early Saturday morning.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

17. Unsupervised TV?

I didn't get that from the story. I got the impression the whole family gathered to watch the execution.

The hanging happened later, when the kid and his older sister were playing. That part was unsupervised.

[sweetheart]

12. fargo

on the small town of Fargo, North Dakota, where the body of Takako Konishi was found in the woods by a hunter. The media reported that she had left Japan with the misunderstanding that the Coen brother's `Fargo' really was a true story and that there was a stash of money hidden somewhere in the snow on a road by a tree. This documentary traces the background to the story and finds that the media, quick to jump on a `funny' story of foolishness, had gotten the story totally wrong.

Almost everyone who has seen the film Fargo will have also heard the story of the Japanese tourist who froze to death looking for the money that was buried in the snow by the kidnapper in this supposedly true film. Many of us will have heard this as part of the `.and finally' or `isn't life funny' sections of the news - I know I did. However this overlooks the fact that someone did die, someone who had lived for 20 or so years until that point - even if she did die looking for money - it makes her gullible, but not a global joke of the day.

This film is immediately interesting as it looks beyond this story to find that this was not true. Konishi talks to a police man when she arrives in North Dakota and he mistakenly believes that she is looking for the money. However the truth of the matter is that Konishi had been to America several times in the previous few years and that witnesses who had given her lifts etc state that she seemed to know where she was going. A long distance phone call to Singapore the night before she died and a statement from her landlady about an American lover who had left her and moved to Singapore points to a more tragic and interesting tale.

This film builds the case for a young woman who had found happiness with a man in this area of America. A young woman who had been heart broken by the end of that happiness and seemed to be seeking some form of return to that feeling or closure by returning to somewhere she had been content for once. The film doesn't claim to have all the answers but does lay bare what it knows as facts - something the media never tried to actually do, they preferred the `kooky' story that it appeared to be on the surface. Interviews with friends and family and resident/officials of North Dakota who met her show that this is not connected to the film in any way and has been twisted to become a nice 3 minute feature on the news.

The film presents the story with a real weightiness that suggests it is more meaningful than it turns out to be, but it is involving because it has the respect to treat Takako Konishi with dignity and try to learn what she was about. She was not a kook or a film nut gone wrong, she was a person who's pain lead her to be found dead - alone in the snow from a mix of drugs and alcohol. The film cannot know what went through her mind but it can do a better job than the media. At times it's delivery is a bit poncey but it works quite well. Ohmori plays Konishi and manages to convey a form of silent personality without forcing the film out of the documentary mould and into a drama.

This film didn't change my life or have a huge impact - mainly because it isn't about wider themes it is only about one person. Konishi was made a joke out of - her death was a source of amusement and became an urban myth to be repeated as fact on the internet and throughout the media. Her story here is moving as it reflects a real person and not the image we have been fed by the news. Her story is sad as we know where it will end but I left the film feeling thankful that someone had honoured her life by at least looking past a 3 minute news slot and looking at a life lost and tried to understand why.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374278/

[pitohui]

21. thanks for the tip

never heard of this film or this story, after reading this post and the link to imdb.com i believe i would like very much to see it

quick news stories are so often more than we are told

[nonconformist]

13. That is so sad. How horrifying for that family. nt

[wellstone dem]

16. and don't tell me you can just not watch

several times, as I was flipping channels I would stop to read the news wire or listen to the commentary, and then would realize that the video was the execution. It was nearly impossible to avoid. I wouldn't let my teenaged daughter flip the channels, for fear of what she would see.

[dsc]

22. This is a sad story

But that said, I think the execution should be televised. It was paid for by the government. It was carried out in the government's name. In a democracy things that are done in the public name should be public to the extent feasible. I have no idea if the kid would have done this failing Saddam's execution. We are hearing now all about the sleeper hold craze or choking game as if it is new. I was deeply into that when I was a kid for a time. It is natural for some number of kids to play around with breath control for erotic or drug like reasons. It is also natural for them to hide it from parents. I feel for the family but I fail to see how preventing Saddam's execution from being broadcast in a country that still have public executions would have changed things.

[NorthernSpy]

24. NOT the first time children have been hurt or killed while imitating a publicized execution...

There was a similar case in India fairly recently.