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).”
Continue reading International Transport Workers’ Federation slams murder of Hadi Salih
“The terrible news that Hadi Salih, International Secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), was murdered at his home in Baghdad last night is a tragedy for his family and friends. A great working class leader, who I was privileged to meet when I chaired a briefing at the Commons last year, has been murdered by fascist Saddam loyalists. The best tribute we can pay to this decent and honourable man is to redouble all efforts to support the IFTU and civil society in Iraq. His murder should force everyone to recognise that the so-called resistance is no friend of the labour movement and that there should be no truck with it whatsoever. All left-wingers should now urgently give active solidarity to the IFTU who have lost a leader who suffered under Saddam and lost his life in trying to build a decent society in Iraq.”
5 January 2005
The TUC today (Wednesday) condemned the murder of Hadi Salih, the international secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), who was shot last night by assassins who broke into his Baghdad home.
TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: “Hadi was a very brave man, who with no thoughts for his own personal safety, returned home as soon as Saddam was gone to try to make Iraq a better place to live and work.
“Like all trade unionists, Hadi believed in peaceful solutions to working people’s problems and his commitment to rebuilding the trade union movement as part of a democratic Iraq has cost him and his family dear. Sadly, Iraq has now joined the list of countries where trade unionists live under the almost daily threat of violence and death, and Iraqi working people have lost someone who worked tirelessly on their behalf.”
Hadi Salih had, on many occasions, condemned those who seek to use violence and terror in Iraqi. Only last month he had been at the ICFTU World Congress in Japan where he had met Brendan Barber and other senior British trade unionists.
Hadi Salih was 56, and was a former printing worker, who helped found the IFTU last May. Under Saddam Hussein’s regime, Hadi Salih was sentenced to death in 1969 for his labour activism. But after five years in jail, he escaped the gallows when his sentence was commuted. After fleeing Iraq, Hadi became a political refugee in Sweden but rushed back to Baghdad shortly after the war began in a bid to rekindle the labour movement.
According to a report in the Philadelphia Daily News, ‘Nearly three-quarters of Iraqis say they “strongly intend” to vote in next month’s pivotal elections, and a small majority believe the country is headed in the right direction,
according to a major new poll of Iraqi attitudes.
Continue reading ‘Three Quarters of Iraqis Strongly Intend to Vote’: New Survey
Erik Eckholm reported in yesterday’s New York Times that ‘leaders of the country’s most powerful political coalition, which is led by Shiite parties, held a surprise news conference in Baghdad. They urged Sunni Arabs to take part in the elections and sought to dispel fears that they were under the sway of Iran or were trying to establish an Islamic theocracy. The leaders of the coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, said elections must proceed as scheduled despite widespread violence, which is concentrated in Sunni regions north and west of Baghdad.’ (AJ)
Janice MacDonald writes that “those who are against the war but show minimal interest in Iraqi human rights are no friends of the Iraqi people”. We back Iraqi unions and others who oppose occupation, neo-liberal economics and being saddled with Saddam’s debts. But the so-called resistance deliberately murders such people for daring to support the UN election process. Nozad Ismail, the president of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, in Kirkuk, has twice escaped assassination and receives daily threats. Solidarity with Nozad and others is the most urgent priority for friends of the Iraqi people.
Gary Kent, Labour Friends of Iraq
December 28 was another day of terrible violence perpetrated by the ‘resistance’. 17 Iraqi policemen were massacred north of Baghdad. Five people were killed and 22 wounded, mostly National Guards, by a homicide bomber in Baquba. Bin Laden and Al-Zarqawi have declared war on the elections.
How should the left respond? Howar Ziad, the Kurdish representative to
the United Nations from 1999 to 2004, and now Iraq’s new ambassador to
Canada, argues that the fight against the ‘resistance’ is an anti-fascist fight. ‘They must not win!’ he cries. This is the fighting faith we need. Armed with this faith a previous generation of the left fought fascism. The recapture of those anti-fascist traditions today means opposing the ‘resistance’ and supporting the Iraqi democrats. (AJ)
The Labour Website of the Year, an annual competition sponsored by LabourStart, is a chance for trade union members to vote online for their favourite union websites. In last year’s competition, over 5,500 trade unionists voted for more than 460 sites. This year, one of the 100 officially nominated sites belongs to the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU). A large number of votes for the IFTU site would significantly raise the profile of the organization and its online presence. Labour Friends of Iraq encourages its members and supporters to vote for the IFTU site today by clicking here
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad writes in the Guardian on the spirit at the Iraqi Communist Party election rally in Baghdad. “Hundreds of women, men and children, poured from all over Baghdad into a big indoor basketball court. All were waving little red flags, singing and chanting old communist slogans. But the funny thing was, they were happy. The whole atmosphere was entirely unlike any other rally, especially a march I had witnessed two days earlier to commemorate the father of Moqtada al-Sadr, at which thousands of men dressed in black happily whipped themselves with metal chains, while others bashed their skulls with large nasty swords, in front of dozens of chest-beating women shrouded in black from head to toe. Even the armed guards searching people in the entrance to the communist rally were smiling and asking politely: “Comrade, do you mind if I search you?”
In fact, they broke every one of the golden rules of Iraqi political rallies, not only by being merry and having a good time, but by actually allowing women – who made up almost half the audience – to participate.
The atmosphere felt more like a family gathering than a political rally. And in fact it was. Apart from a dozen or so young artists with wavy hair and long leather jackets and red scarves, everyone else was either an old communist in his 60s, or a direct family member.
The jolly atmosphere faded away only when an old communist poet read a poem he wrote in the 60s for a revolutionary who was killed after a failed uprising. Old men started to weep – some for the old comrade, others for the decades they had spent in the dungeons.
“I was 25 when I first heard this poem,” a man in his 60s wearing an old Lenin cap told me. “We used to dream of changing the world. Maybe now we have a future.”
For the full report go to here
Ann Clwyd MP, The Prime Minister’s Special Envoy for Human Rights in Iraq (and Joint President of Labour Friends of Iraq) has been reporting from Iraq for BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ Programme. To listen to yesterday’s clip, from Kirkuk, (14 December) go here and scroll down to 08.46 on the Running Order. (Alan Johnson)