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Eric Lee pays tribute to Hadi Saleh . The torture and murder of Hadi Saleh marks a turning point for trade unions around the world. The question is now posed — to quote the famous American trade union song, “Which side are you on?” Let me explain.

Eric Lee pays tribute to Hadi Saleh . The torture and murder of Hadi Saleh marks a turning point for trade unions around the world. The question is now posed — to quote the famous American trade union song, “Which side are you on?” Let me explain.

In 1944 Heinrich Himmler formed the Nazi Werewolf guerilla movement. It fought the Allied armies inside Germany until 1947. It would be wrong to suggest a direct parallel to the Ba’athist component of the ‘Iraqi ‘resistance’ planned by Saddam. But these extracts from an article on the Werewolves in History Today October 2000 by Perry Biddiscombe (author of The Last Nazis), suggests many points of comparison.

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 rightly damned by Johann Hari (Opinion, 7 January). It is also a watershed moment when progressives who have shown a “sneaking regard” for the so-called resistance should shed such lethal illusions. What worries Labour Friends of Iraq is that 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 … Continue reading They shall not pass, Harry Barnes letter in Independent

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