Another martyred comrade

A statement issued by the General Federation of Iraqi Workers

24 April 2007

The Executive Committee of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers mourns the martyr Vice President of the General Federation of Iraqi workers of the province of Nineveh and his martyred wife on the 9th of April 2007.

A statement issued by the General Federation of Iraqi Workers: said we mourn our martyred trade union leader, brother Moaaid Hamid, the Vice President of our Federation in the province of Nineveh and his martyred wife following clashes between forces of the Iraqi army and terrorist elements in the province.

The deceased was one of the first trade union leaders who contributed to the creation of the IFTU after the fall of the former dictator in 2003 and has played an active role in building a genuine democratic trade union movement despite all the difficult circumstances.

The martyred was subjected to persecution and prosecution by the repressive machinery of Saddam's regime.

Two years ago, he was abducted by terrorist elements and was subjected to severe violence at the hands of terrorists before he was freed by Iraqi security forces.

Glory and eternity to our fallen comrade trade union leader Hamed and his wife.

Glory to the martyrs of the Iraqi working class.

Shame on the murderous terrorists.

The Executive Office of the General Union of Workers of Iraq March 16 April 2007

Time for Muslim Nations and the media to oppose Chlorine bombers

Henry Porter of the Observer and Mohammed of Iraq The Model both consider it a crime against humanity for Iraqi insurgents to use chlorine bombs.

Sunni Political Leaders Failing Sunnis

Ahmed Alaskary

April 17, 2007

Sunni political leaders since the fall of the regime have continued to vocally support the insurgency and oppose the political process. Sunni Vice-President, Tariq Al-Hashemi in an interview with a Qatari newspaper last year legitimized and supported the insurgency. Whereas prior to the January 2005 elections, Sunni political leaders tried to bring an advancing democratic political process to a halt by urging their followers to boycott elections, since the December 2005 elections when they joined the political process they have tried to cancel out democratic advancements at almost every stage. For example the reaction of the Islamic Party, the largest Sunni political group, to the attacks on Parliament last week which saw 1 Sunni MP killed, was to blame the government and call for the entire democratic process to be abandoned in favor of a “Plan B”.

This belies the fact that Thursday’s bombing inside the Green Zone was the culmination of a series of incidents that made this almost inevitable:

In November, a bomb was discovered in the Sunni speaker of Parliament’s convoy as he was entering the Green Zone.

Also in November, the arrest of Adnan Dulaimi’s bodyguard on suspicion of planning a massive multi-vehicle suicide bombing operation inside Baghdad’s International Zone.

The discovery of TNT and explosives at the homes of Sunni MPs Khalaf al-Ilyan last week and Dhafir Alani last month.

The problem is that Sunni political leaders have failed to make a clear decision as to whether they support the democratic process or the insurgency. Up until now they have had one foot on either side. Some extremists within their rank who support their pro-insurgency message use the access that the political leaders have gained to carry out their terrorist activity against the government.

Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar fighting Al-Qaeda and insurgents in western Iraq, complain that instead of supporting their efforts, the Sunni Islamic Party, far from helping them seems to be supporting the insurgents.

The Sunni community has consistently been let down by its political leaders. The time has come for Sunni political leaders to decide where they stand – with the democratic process and government, or the insurgents and terrorists. The international community should pressure them to make this decision, sooner rather than later.

News Analysis brought to you by the Iraqi Prospect Organisation - www.iprospect.org.uk

The Iraqi Prospect Organisation is an Iraqi-based network of young men and women promoting democratic values.

Remembering Najim

Abdullah Muhsin (International Representative of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers), Dave Anderson MP (Joint President Labour Friends of Iraq) and Sue Rogers (Chair TUC Iraq Solidarity Committee and Treasurer NASUWT), remember a fallen comrade.

The Iraqi labour movement has lost another courageous trade union leader - a patriot who wanted to see Iraq free, to see his family live in a decent and prosperous environment and to see the steady growth of free, independent and democratic unions.

Veteran leader, Najim Abd-Jasem, the General Secretary of the Mechanic Workers' Union, was abducted by criminal militias in Baghdad and found three days later on 30 March 2007. There were signs of torture all over his body.

We all met Najim almost exactly one year ago on a Labour Friends of Iraq delegation that held a summit in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, with twenty two leading figures from Baghdad, Basra and Babel.

We spent five hours in their company and agreed a strategy of moral and material assistance to the fledgling Iraqi labour movement, which has since been taken up by the TUC.

Assembled in that room were men, and some women, who had taken great risks in standing up for freedom against Saddam's fascist-type regime and who were trying to build a movement that brings together workers regardless of religion.

They asked us to provide aid so that they could stand on their own two feet and contribute to social justice in their war-ravaged country.

Each had a distinguished record of bravery in confronting Saddam and then the sectarian militias.

Najim was one of the key leading trade unionists who help to establish what has now become the General Federation of Iraqi Workers after the fall of Saddam's dictatorship and was elected as the General Secretary of the Mechanics Workers Union in late 2003.

Under the former dictatorship of Saddam, Najim worked for the Health Ministry as a mechanic before he was dismissed because of his opposition to Saddam's yellow unions.

He joined the underground trade union movement (WDTUM) and fought against the former dictatorial regime.

Najim was one of a generation of trade union activists who each knew the risk they were running. There have been many attacks on union activists and they all knew Hadi Saleh, an exiled printer who had returned home to revive free unions in 2003.

In January 2005, he was tortured at his home and murdered by remnants of Saddam's secret police. A world-wide chorus of condemnation greeted his tragic fate. But it is clear that the murder of Hadi (who had impressed people with his cheerful disposition in meetings at the Commons and elsewhere) and now Najim are part of a concerted campaign to eliminate the leadership of the newly formed independent and democratic unions that strongly oppose sectarianism.

Najim leaves a wife and four children. He also leaves a movement that needs urgent assistance for they are facing attacks from all sides. The barbaric murder of Najim and Hadi illustrate the lengths to which sectarian militias and former Baa'thist security men will go.

But, sadly, the unions are also being frozen out by the current central government in Baghdad. Saddam's ban on public sector organisation remains in place. A decree freezing other unions' assets was issued in 2005 and needs to be rescinded. After decades of totalitarian government, ministers remain suspicious of independent unions. They should come to recognise that such unions are the best friends a decent civil society and democracy can have.

And to cap it all, the movement faces occasional and inexplicable hostility from US and Iraqi military forces. The headquarters of the GFIW has been raided on two occasions in the last few weeks.

Yet the new Iraqi trade union movement is a success story. It unites all sectors of Iraq society. It does not see itself as Shia or Sunni, Kurd or Arab, Assyrian or Turkoman but as workers, citizens and above all Iraqis though they celebrate their differences.

It has gone from nearly nil in 2003 to many hundreds of thousands of members across Iraq. Its leaders were mostly opposed to the invasion of Iraq, preferring to rely on internal means to overthrow of Saddam's fascist-type dictatorship, but they are enthusiasts for the political process of building a democratic, federal and pluralist society.

Najim was murdered for advancing the cause of social justice, equality and human rights. He wanted a free Iraq with lasting and genuine democracy and independent trade unions at its heart.

He was brave and outspoken person. He firmly opposed all forms of sectarianism. He championed workers' and women's rights. He lived in a very poor and ordinary working class area of Baghdad and spared no efforts to advance the fundamental rights of workers, as enshrined in International Labour Organisation conventions.

His killers have silenced him, as they silenced Hadi before. Their martyrdom is a heavy tragedy for their families and comrades. But we are sure that if either Hadi or Najim were with us now, they would be saying that the loss of a comrade should not be in vain.

The loss of Najim must spur people here to increase their solidarity with the Iraqi labour movement. They are on the same side as ourselves. Let's stop ignoring them or sitting on our hands.

Interview with Wishyaar Hamad Haji

Gary Kent interviews an Iraqi Kurdistan trade union leader

Iraqi trade unionists often turn up at the Commons nowadays. They are very down to earth people with inspiring tales to tell of their own past – though they are always far too modest about their brave battles against Saddam and contemporary Iraqi terrorism – and to win allies for the future of their movement and country.

The latest comrade to pitch up for tea at Portcullis House was Wishyaar Hamad Haji, a member of the secretariat of the Iraqi Kurdistan Teachers' Union. Wishyaar is based in the region's capital of Arbil where he is head of the literacy department at the Education Ministry as well as an author and journalist.

He was on a whistle-stop tour which had taken him from Arbil to Belfast, where he was a guest of the NASUWT teachers' union at their annual conference, and back to London for a couple of days. The Education Secretary Alan Johnson had been a guest speaker at the Belfast gathering and praised the secular trade union movement in both Northern Ireland and Iraq.

I began by asking him about the priorities of his 104,000 strong union. Not surprisingly, wages and living standards topped the list as did what he saw as the increasingly successful battle to root out what he called "the culture of domination" – physical violence against pupils which was part and parcel of Saddam's totalitarian regime. He added that democracy required a human rights ethos in the curriculum and that current teaching methods lagged far behind modern ideals.

Politically, the union is full-square behind current efforts to build a sustainable federal democracy. I pressed him on whether he and his colleagues would prefer independence. He maintained that "we have the right to that aspiration but we know the reality " and emphasised that the name of the game was a new federal Iraq.

He also emphasised the need for a resolution of the status of Kirkuk to which Iraqi Kurds have historical claims and stressed the importance of holding a referendum in the nearish future.

He argued that unions are a vital building block of civil society and democracy. I know from meeting Iraqi union leaders that they are very committed to increasing the participation of women in their movement and in society as a whole. So I next asked for his views on current attempts to import Sharia law into the constitutions of both the Kurdistan Region and Iraq. He supports the Union of Kurdistan Women's opposition to it and favoured the separation of mosque and state.

We briefly talked about the new Iraqi passports which are only available to women on a restricted basis – with permission from their men folk. The Kurdistan Region has done much more than many parts of the Middle East in the last decade to enable women but this part of our conversation was a salutary reminder of the low base from which women's liberation begins in the region.

The UK has a good reputation in the Kurdistan Region where English is a compulsory second language from the first year of school, though Arabic only starts a couple of years later. When I was there last year as part of the LFIQ delegation, this was stressed many times by all those we met who were keen on external investment as a means of creating jobs and thereby building a stronger labour movement which could then argue more effectively for social justice.

As with every other Iraqi trade unionist I have ever met, he argued that troops out now would be a "catastrophe" without first building up the capacity of the Iraqi security forces, for which he wanted training from British troops. If only more people on the left would heed what trade unionists like Wishyaar are asking for – political and material solidarity.

Huge Communist rally in Baghdad

See this report of the first mass event in Baghdad in years by any secular democratic group. The ICP sees national reconciliation and unity as necessary to ending foreign occupation and regaining political and economic sovereignty.

A Sad Anniversary

Harry Barnes remembers meeting Najim Abd-Jasem a year ago

Torture and Murder of Iraqi Trade Union Leader Najim Abd-Jasem

The General Federation of Iraqi Workers has just published this statement on the abduction, torture and murder of a senior and veteran leader of the independent Iraqi labour movement in what is most clearly a part of a deliberate and systematic campaign to physically liquidate the non-sectarian leadership of the new Iraqi trade unions.

Members of the Labour Friends of Iraq delegation to that country met our comrade Najim Abd-Jasem last year when he was part of a 22 strong delegation from the Iraqi trade union movement to discuss solidarity work with us. His barbaric murder is a great loss to the Iraqi and international labour movement and we condemn it with the utmost vigour.

His tragic loss should not be in vain and should prompt far greater material and moral assistance to the Iraqi trade unions in their fight to build a new civil society and democracy in Iraq. As the old saying goes: don't mourn, organise.

Gary Kent
Director Labour Friends of Iraq

GFIW Statement

Najim A Jasem was kidnapped by militias on 27 March. His body was found on 30 March 2007. His body bears huge signs of torture. He was member of the underground Workers' Trade Union Movement (WDTUM) and fought against the regime of Saddam. He was dismissed from his job because of his trade union activities. He was reinstated after the fall of Saddam. He was one of the key founder of the new democratic IFTU, now the GFIW, and was elected the General Secretary of the Mechanics Workers' Union. He participated in many national and international seminars and training - by Unison and the American Solidarity Center.

Military Raids, Arrest at Iraqi Union Office: ICEM Demands Action

The ICEM, the Global Union Federation for oil workers, is calling for strong condemnation of the two recent US and Iraqi military raids on union offices in Baghdad. The raids, during which one worker was arrested, and computers and fax machines at the central office of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW) confiscated, occurred on 23 and 25 February.

The ICEM, with affiliates in 125 countries, is calling on trade unions worldwide to directly protest this unprovoked attack on a trade union federation that stands for nation building and bettering the living conditions inside Iraq.

ICEM is calling on trade unions and others to write to Iraqi embassies in their home countries, as well as to send messages of solidarity to GFIW leaders that their efforts to build strong trade unions in Iraq will succeed and with it, fair and just reconstruction for all Iraqi people.

Trade unions are asked to register a protest with the Iraqi embassy or consulate in their country by visiting: http://www.mofa.gov.iq/index.aspx . They are also being strongly urged to write GFIW leaders in Baghdad to tell them they protest these forceful and menacing acts.