Lest we forget

On our recent trip to Iraqi Kurdistan we were privileged to meet dozens of the bravest people you can imagine. We met people who had been imprisoned and tortured under Saddam Hussein but who were loath to go into detail because their experiences were so common.

We were given a tour of the Red House in Sulamani, a notorious torture centre and one of very many throughout Saddam’s Iraq. We saw how 70 prisoners were stuffed into rooms the size of an average living room and the detailed mechanisms of torture were explained to us.

The grim building was pock-marked by bullets from when it was liberated by the Iraqi Kurd Peshmerga forces and it has now been turned into a living memorial to the victims of Saddam whose rotting Soviet tanks and guns adorn the yard.

We also met Nozad Ismail, the union leader in Kirkuk who has twice escaped assassination attempts and who is under constant threat from the self-styled “resistance.”

Many of us had met Hadi Saleh on his visits to Britain to drum up support for the trade union movement and this moving obituary by Alex Gordon reminds us of the bravery and sacrifice of our comrades and how we will do our best to increase solidarity with the Iraqi labour movement.

Gary Kent