More Labour MPs back Commons motion in support of LFIQ appeal for Nozad Ismail

MPs David Taylor, Bob Wareing, Rudi Vis, Lynne Jones, Martin Caton, Syd Rapson, Ernie Ross and Win Griffiths (five opposed and three backed military action) are the latest to back the Commons motion in support of the LFIQ Global Appeal on Nozad Ismail and support continues to come from around the world. The Commons adjourns today for Easter and probably only has a few days left until it is dissolved before the election, when all Commons motions fall. We may revive this motion in the next Parliament. The motion has been backed in roughly equal numbers by those who took different positions before the invasion. This symbolises a key aim of LFIQ: to unite party members in favour of post-war solidarity.

MPs back LFIQ Global Appeal on Nozad Ismail

MPs Harry Barnes, Mike Gapes, John Mann and Kevin McNamara are the first to support an Early Day Motion in the Commons backing the LFIQ appeal.
That this House supports the Labour Friends of Iraq global appeal, which has been supported by numerous rank and file trade unionists and others across the world, to publicise the severe threat to the life of Nozad Ismail, the President of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions in Kirkuk, who has twice escaped assassins and who receives regular death threats; believes that the self-styled resistance in Iraq is deliberately targeting the leadership of the Iraqi labour movement and, therefore, the prospects for a united, secular and democratic Iraq, as was exemplified when Hadi Saleh, the International Secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) was tortured and strangled before his house was ransacked for his comrades’ contact details, when Ali Hassan Abd of the IFTU’s Oil and Gas Union, was gunned down in front of his children, and when Ahmed Adris Abbas of the Transport and Communication Workers Union was also assassinated in Baghdad; and appeals for the widest possible support for the Labour Friends of Iraq initiative not only from supporters of the British Labour movement but from anyone with an interest in nurturing Iraqi democracy.

New NGO Association (NA) formed

More than 35 Iraqi NGOs participated at the NGO meeting held at the Palestine Hotel on Saturday the 19th of March 2005. With the intention of holding the first in a series of meetings to establish an umbrella group, NGO representatives from across Iraq were invited to discuss the role and structure of the Association. Each NGO was given the opportunity to introduce its field of work, air its concerns, and advance its ideas. NGOs represented work in areas of focus such as human rights, agriculture, civil society, gender issues, children, etc. Their web site is being constructed but will be at www.ngoassociation.org

LFIQ letter in today’s Guardian

Andrew Murray (Comment, March 16) wants “full sovereignty restored to
the Iraqi people”, but rubbishes the election in which 8.5 million Iraqis defied the bombers. It was right to oppose the invasion, but wrong for the anti-war movement to ignore solidarity with the new and independent labour movement, women’s groups and democratic political parties that desperately need our support.
Alan Johnson
Labour Friends of Iraq
The letter was slightly edited. Alan here describes his own position on the invasion. LFIQ has no collective view and seeks to unite those who took different positions on the invasion.

IFTU reports success for strike at Baghdad Hotel

The IFTU web site reports today that workers at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad staged a successful strike action in which they won a wage increase and that union officials have resumed negotiations with the management to better working conditions, wages and pensions.