Author: garykent

Hadi’s brutal murder. Friday January 14, 2005 We unreservedly condemn the brutal murder of Hadi Saleh, the international secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, at his home in Baghdad on the night of January 4. He was tied and blindfolded and tortured before being forced to kneel and strangled by electric cord. Hadi was a brave patriot who stood up for workers’ rights under Saddam Hussein and was a key activist in the clandestine Workers Democratic Trade Union Movement which was established in 1980 to keep alive an independent labour movement. He was hunted by the regime for … Continue reading Hadi Saleh tribute in Guardian

The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions has posted an interview with Hadi Saleh, the slain International Secretary of the IFTU, conducted during the ICFTU Congress in December 2004. His recognition of the dangers facing trade unionists is extremely poignant in the light of his own brutal murder.

LFIQ regularly posts information about those contending the Iraqi elections on 30 January without necessarily endorsing any. People’s Unity (Ittihad Al-Shaab) List is a coalition electoral list that includes 275 Iraqi Communists, democrats and independent patriotic and social figures, with 91 women candidates, covering all Iraq’s provinces. The candidates represent the full social, ethnic and religious spectrum of Iraqi society.

Labour Friends of Iraq support the right of workers in Iraq, as everywhere, to choose for themselves their trade union. This is a basic labour right enshrined in International Labour Conventions 87 and 98. The union’s political viewpoint is not legally relevant to the right to freely establish a trade union. In a democracy, the state has no right to abrogate to itself the right to define one union as legal and another as illegal.

The brutal torture and murder of Hadi Salih, who impressed all with his basic decency and dignity after decades of oppression and exile when he briefed MPs last year, is a watershed moment when progressives who have shown a “sneaking regard” for the so-called resistance should shed such lethal illusions. Hadi’s murder is part of a strategy to eliminate the leadership of the emerging Iraqi labour movement. Nozad Ismail, the President of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions in Kirkuk, has twice escaped the assassins and receives daily threats. We have launched a global appeal See entry for 22 December. … Continue reading Harry Barnes MP renews appeal for Nozad Ismail

Assassinated by Anti-People Terrorists The Political Bureau of the Iraqi Communist Party issued a statement today, 5th January 2005, mourning a prominent trade unionist leader and party member, comrade Hadi Saleh (Abu Furat), who was assassinated in Baghdad in a cowardly act by anti-people terrorist elements and supporters of the ousted dictatorial regime.

A terrorist group has assassinated Mr. Hadi Saleh, a prominent leader and international secretary of Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions-IFTU, Wednesday January 04. 2005 .They assassinated him near his home in Baghdad, in a series of assassination and physical eradication exercised by the terrorist groups. Assassination is tradition by those political groups who have no any connection with Iraqi people and they are trying to implement their policies through threats, assassination persecution and physical eradication. Assassination will not end the path of any progressive political activist and group which determined to struggle for a free and progressive life for Iraqi … Continue reading Statement of the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI) on the Assassination of Mr. Hadi Saleh, international secretary of Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions-IFTU

Hadi Salih, International Officer of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, was a courageous union activist. His assassination in Baghdad yesterday is a crime against Iraq’s working people and its labor movement. The cowardly manner of his killing – he was shot in his bed – is intended to send a message to Iraq’s workers and trade unionists – that their efforts to participate in any peaceful process of political change will be met with death. We stand in solidarity with the IFTU in rejecting this brutal intimidation.

David Cockroft, General Secretary of global union federation the ITF, said today: “I have to report with sadness that we have learned of the murder at his home last night of Hadi Salih, International Officer of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU).”