Khalil Shawqi, subject of Iraqi film director Koutaiba Al-Janabi’s "Khalil Shawqi: The Ever Restless Man" winner of the ‘Silver Hawk’ award for short documentary films, at the 4th Arab Film Festival in Rotterdam in June 2004 is co-sponsoring a cultural project with The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) to raise money for an Iraqi Workers’ Theatre Company.
Born in 1924, Khalil Shawqi was a railworker and a member of the Iraqi Railway Workers’ Union from 1959-1963. He later founded three theatre companies for railworkers. He is the author of many plays in Arabic and has made numerous films including 16 on the lives of railworkers. He has undertaken many theatrical and educational projects to advance arguments for social justice and workers’ rights.
Khalil Shawqi is very well known in Iraq and across the Arab world as a playwright and theatre actor as well as a representative of that generation of 1960s idealists and visionaries whose dreams of a better world were brutally smashed by the rise to power of Saddam Hussein. The diaspora of Iraqi intellectuals, artists, trade unionists and others who fled from persecution at the hands of the Ba’ath regime are able to renew their commitment to education and progressive social change through working with the newly emerging democratic trade union movements in Iraq.
The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions founded in April 2003 in just over a year has established 12 national unions.
The IFTU campaigns for:
However, with more than 50% of our people unemployed, IFTU’s priority is to secure jobs and a living wage for Iraqi workers. To achieve this the urgent task of educating Iraqi workers about trade unionism, labour and democratic rights, health and safety and other issues becomes more and more urgent.
This is why the IFTU has launched the ‘Khalil Shawqi Appeal’. It is our modest aim with the assistance of the international labour movement here in Britain and elsewhere to take travelling theatre companies to every workplace in Iraq to explain through the medium of theatre, poetry and exhibitions. Theatre is a great popular tradition amongst the Iraqi people. Our initiative will take back the tradition of trade unionism from the discredited ‘state-run’ trade unionism of the Ba’ath regime. To do this we need the help of trade union branches, regions, conferences and national bodies in Britain. Education is a massive task and we are commencing this project by equipping a Bus as a travelling theatre to tour Iraqi workplaces and communities.
If you or your trade union organisation can help us please contact: Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) c/o UK Representative, Abdullah Muhsin: 07976846868 or by email to: abdullahmuhsin@iraqitradeunions.org